Soccer fans will get a kick out of the game-day action in this straightforward series opener.
An all-boys soccer team is put to the test when a talented girl wants to join their ranks.
Jeff Michaels is excited to learn that his middle school will now be offering sports teams for sixth graders in the fall: field hockey for girls and soccer for boys. When his female classmate Andrea “Andi” Carillo shows up for soccer tryouts, he’s impressed by her skill on the field. Others, however, are upset and even angry that she’s attempting to join the team. When Andi is unjustly excluded by a disgruntled coach, Jeff and Andi reach out to the media to pressure him into letting her on the team. Andi grapples for playing time and soon proves her strength on and off the field, but the team is still fractured by huge disagreements over Andi and even bigger egos. The team will have to learn to work together to reach their goal of winning the conference title. Feinstein includes detailed play-by-play of the middle school soccer matches that will be thrilling for soccer buffs but less exciting for the casual reader. Andi’s grit and refusal to back down in the face of sexism are inspirational and reflect the real challenges facing student athletes today. It is mentioned briefly that one soccer teammate is Jewish and two are black; other characters are assumed white.
Soccer fans will get a kick out of the game-day action in this straightforward series opener. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-374-31203-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
IN THE NEWS
An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate.
Toxic waste dumped in the Everglades gives a quartet of middle school sleuths their first case.
Leading Carl Hiaasen fans over familiar ground, Ponti pitches 12-year-old Alex Sherlock and his 13-year-old sister, Zoe, with school friends Lina and Yadi as sidekicks, into a summer caper. It all begins with the hunt for a supposed fortune buried decades ago by Al Capone, culminates in a narrow escape from an exploding yacht, and ultimately exposes a smooth-talking bad actor shady enough to bring in even federal authorities. As the kids’ live-in Grandpa, a retired investigative reporter, delivers pointers on how to conduct interviews and sift evidence while grandly driving them around South Florida in his classic Cadillac, Roberta, the budding detectives display sharp wits, eyes, and negotiating skills. The last come in particularly useful when they’re dealing with their lawyer…who’s also their mom. Both the plot and the chain of evidence take logical courses, and since Dad is a marine biologist and Lina’s a recent transplant from Wyoming, Ponti is able to use their dialogue to highlight the local culture and larger ecological issues. Main characters present white, apart from tech wiz Yadi, who is cued Latine.
An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781665932530
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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