Another installment in this ongoing author and illustrator collaboration (Testing Miss Malarkey, 2000, etc.) explores Miss Malarkey’s sojourn as the new soccer coach. Proving anything can be tamed with beneficent intentions and a good instruction book, Miss Malarkey successfully cajoles the youngsters and their parents into a truly polite soccer league. There are a lot of very recognizable characters afoot, young and old, and O’Malley’s cartoon-like drawings bring them into sharp focus. There’s the kid who stands on the field and doesn’t move, and then there is the phalanx of overbearing parents, who yell, scream, criticize, and pull their hair out. Miss Malarkey overrules them all. In the end though, will the humor here appeal more to soccer moms than to young soccer aspirants? Even if it were more interesting to them than a penalty kick, would it only pander to the young sardonic personality and fertilize little development? The message is to be a good sport so perhaps there will be thousands of soccer kids sitting their folks down and reading this lesson to them as a bedtime story. It couldn’t hurt. (Picture book. 5-10)
