THE SOCCER DIARIES

A 10-day soccer camp gives a tough-as-nails midfielder from England a chance to show her stuff as well as get her head straight a year after her dad’s death.

Spun off from Palmer’s Roy of the Rovers titles, this series kickoff sends Rocky, Roy Race’s 15-year-old kid sister, all the way to California for up-tempo rounds of training, scrimmages, and both peer and team bonding—plus a bit of savvy counseling—on the way to triumphs on the pitch. Off the pitch, recurrent nightmares and worry about her mother’s emotional stability, in addition to minor friction with a fellow camper who proves to be a good teammate but a mean girl, make for serviceable subplots. Printed with large type and spacious margins, this might look like a Matt Christopher–style sports story, but readers weaned on those episodes are in for a wild ride: Rocky’s hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners style of play makes her matches come off more like rugby scrums, complete with fouls, aggressive intimidation, angry soccer moms, and a certain amount of drama to boot, since she’s dismayed to get her period the day of the climactic match and takes a vicious elbow to the eye during play. By the close, both her world and her circle of friends are larger, and her star is definitely on the rise. Though most of the cast seems to be white, Rocky has teammates from Iran and Ghana.

Packed with plenty of action to keep the pages turning.