February 1, 2017
Whether a girl might want to play football is the thread that holds together this dual narrative of a sports novel and a budding romance, told in alternating voices by the two sweethearts. Eighth-grader Tessa is a competitive cross-country runner, showing impressive speed and assured of a place on that team when she heads to high school next fall. At 14, she is attracted to Caleb, a boy she regularly plays flag football with. Pickup games here and there slowly develop into a sweet first courtship. Over the summer, Caleb endures dangerous but routine hazing as he casually follows in his older brother's footsteps, while Tessa is pulled into her mother's campaign for mayor. Partly in rebellion and partly for attention, Tessa announces in a press interview that she plans to go out for football. Caleb's chapters show him wrestling with his ideas about his own future as well as his growing interest in Tessa. Outwardly she seems committed to football, but uncertainty comes through in her chapters as she encounters the brutal physicality of football camp. Both narratives are straightforward and readable. Tessa is shown as white on the cover; Caleb also reads as white. While the narrative twice states that more than 1,600 girls actually play football in high school, it is oddly ambiguous about Tessa's future in the sport. Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing, though her ambivalence about football gives the lie to the determined-looking girl on the cover. (Fiction. 11-15)
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February 1, 2017
Gr 6-9-Just before the end of eighth grade, Tessa and her two friends show off their running skills in a town road race and catch the eye of the high school cross-country coach. Tessa loves cross-country, but lately, she's been drawn to football. She joins the summer league with the guys, but all ends horribly when she drops the winning pass that ends their season. Tessa is heartbroken that football seems to be over for her and comes up with a brilliant idea: she'll attend football camp. Short chapters told in the alternating perspectives of Tessa and Caleb, her next-door neighbor, keep the plot moving and the story intriguing. Caleb offers readers an inside look at what the guys really think about having a girl on the football team. Further drama comes from engaging secondary plotlines that center on friendships, family dynamics, and relationships. This is a great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally's Catching Jordan.
Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 1, 2017
Grades 8-11 Tessa loves football, and she's been honing her skills with cute boy-next-door Caleb. She's always accepted that she'd have to opt for something other than football, like cross-country, to participate in school sports. But now that she's getting ready for high school, she wants to make some decisions for herself, so in spite of her demanding parents' wishes, she insists on going to football camp. Heldring alternates between Caleb's and Tessa's perspectives, nicely exploring their struggles with self-determination, family conflict, and the importance of teamwork as well as their efforts to balance their burgeoning relationship with the pressures they each encounter regarding Tessa's football dreams. Meanwhile, Tessa faces extra scrutinyher mother is running for mayor, so her football aspirations put her at the center of a local media frenzy. Though Caleb and Tessa's voices occasionally sound quite similar, there's enough fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance in this slim novel that readers looking for girl-powered sports stories should find plenty to like.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
March 1, 2017
If any girl can make Pilchuck High School's football team, it's fourteen-year-old wide receiver Tessa Dooley. She's fast, runs good routes, catches well, and knows how to play head games with defenders. But so far all she has played is summer-league flag football. She doesn't know if she can handle tackle footballshe's never even worn a helmet. As the summer unfolds, she finds herself having to defend her love of the game (her parents want her to concentrate on more serious things); she also finds herself becoming the girlfriend of quarterback Caleb McCleary. In alternating first-person narratives, Tessa and Caleb give voice to their feelings about each other and about football. Though the back-and-forth, he said/she said of the narrative feels like Ping-Pong at times, it does serve to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint, letting complicated feelings remain complicated. There are no heroics in Tessa's first official school game, but a satisfying performance and a realization that she has been an inspiration for a younger girl who decides she, too, wants to play football someday. Interviewed in the local paper, Tessa says, I guess what matters is that I have a choiceWhether I play football in high school or not, I'll never have to wonder what was possible. As of now (according to the book), sixteen hundred girls across the country are playing high-school football and, like Tessa, pushing themselves to see what's possible. dean schneider
(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)