Go team! (Fiction. 9-14)
The Mighty Ducks (of film fame) meet soccer, Irish style.
Only this time it’s a team called “Mighty Dynamo.” Twelve-year-old Noah, a white boy, is unfairly kicked off his school’s soccer team by his principal after being the victim in a fight during a match. With an important international school soccer championship coming up, the only way Noah can play is to create a team himself. With his asthmatic best friend doing a lot of the coaching, the pair brings together a motley group of players, including two girls, a tough, impoverished, white bully, and a Nigerian-Irish boy (who provides much of the book’s diversity). Playing is critical to Noah; he’s hopeful he can catch the eye of a scout and get on track to be a professional player, a job that will provide the money to bring his dad back home to the west of Ireland from a job in Australia. Thrillingly detailed descriptions of intense soccer matches, plenty of evil villainy on the part of several sketchy, almost caricatured adults, and teammates with fully realized characters all serve to make this an engrossing (if rather predictable) and often humorous sports story, enhanced by the Irish setting. Although too long to promote to very reluctant readers, there is enough breathless action and strong, believable sports flavor to this effort to make it an easy sell to those (male and female) that enjoy the sport.
Go team! (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07924-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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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