SCRAPPY

by Osmond Molarsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1983

How Scrappy, an eleven-year-old girl who's accepted on the soccer team after outscoring the team's one male-chauvinist holdout in a contest, comes to accept that girls can be girls and tough players too. Despite her own position as the only girl in the league, Scrappy is the one to quit in disgust when her team's sponsor/manager retires and the team is taken on by Mary Louise of the new Mary Louise shop (children's clothing). Mary Louise wears loose blond hair and glides around the shop in a filmy dress like pretty-pretty Floramae in Scrappy's class, whose mere presence makes the boys act weird and silly. But Mary Louise also captained her college soccer team; and after she's brought the team's league standing up a few notches, Scrappy returns. Meanwhile, though, she's been forced to buy a dress (yech!) for her brother's wedding and been confused by her pleasure at the way it falls softly around her legs. At the wedding, she lands her poor cousin Rick a chop that knocks him down because he says she looks cute--but apologizes soon after and, when he repeats the compliment, says ""merrily,"" ""I don't care if I do""--because while walking up the aisle she's decided that ""whatever was happening to her, she still was Scrappy and she knew it!"" The team gets one more jolt when Mary Louise gets too busy with her shop and turns the team over to Elite Garbage Collection--but when they learn that Elite's owner was a World Cup soccer player from Spain, they don't care if they are known as the ""Garbage"" team. Neither the team's good luck with coaches nor Scrappy's instant adjustment to the trappings of gender is to be taken seriously--and couldn't she have been converted to a dress less filmy and flowery? Nevertheless the story is smooth and undemanding and possibly reassuring.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dodd, Mead

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION