VENUS AND THE COMETS

Venus Maguire, aging child model, longs for something more. Her commercials for diapers and baby products still air on television, but at age nine, she’s getting a little too old for these roles. Her stage mother has indulged her tantrums and pouting over the years, because she wants her daughter to be even more famous than she was as Miss Texas Oil pageant. Now she really doesn’t want Venus to spoil her looks while playing soccer. Chock full of cardboard caricatures: Venus with her sparkly crown and advanced knowledge of make up, the striving mother, and the jealous trio of mean girls who thwart Venus as she tries her feet at soccer, this has little to recommend it. While there is a dearth of good sports books for young girls, this effort, with predictable plot—was there any question that Venus would find herself and new friends on the field?—and choppy writing, misses the goal. (Fiction. 7-9)