The team that produced Swish (1997) returns to the world of sports with a somewhat older star. Catching a football game on television, white-haired Granny Whiteoak hears the chant go up: “Where is Whiteoak?” Martin and Sampson shape the story as a charging rhyme in these early pages: “Granny takes a deep breath, / wriggles her toes. / Aches and pains say, / ‘No! No! No!’ / Should she quit? / Give up her dream? / Is she too old / for the football team?” Evidently Granny had a couple of low moments in her football career, and so she sets out to avenge them. As she takes to the field, the authors insert some non-rhymed sentences into the verse, which keeps readers on their toes and demands that they make their own word music. Granny pulls it off in her fuzzy yellow bedroom slippers; she even has a helmet-clanging encounter with a behemoth from the other team, but it all ends with a deeply gratifying Sis! Boom! Bah! as Granny flies over the goal post—having lost her cane in the collision. Sharp eyes will realize that Granny’s never left her two-poster bed, but she’s still the most vigorous grandmother seen since Barbara Williams’s Kevin’s Grandma (1975). (Picture book. 4-8)
