I am always looking for more sports books to connect with my students who are athletes.  I’ve found lots of books around basketball, baseball, and football, but not so many for soccer.  Tangerine (Scholastic 1997) by Edward Bloor will be one of those books that I put into the hands of my soccer players and many other readers.  Paul Fisher lives to play soccer, but Tangerine is about so much more:  disturbing family dynamics and  willfully blind adults.

Paul Fisher may be the only character wearing thick glasses, but he is the only member of his family to see things clearly in this new place they’ve moved.  On the surface, the town of Tangerine is filled with gleaming subdivisions and is bursting with opportunities.  As Paul struggles to fit into another new place, he discovers some very strange things going on.  Thunderstorms fill every afternoon, but not even a lightning strike that kills a student will cancel sports practices.  A muck fire constantly burns underground while mosquitoes fill the air above.  In between, termites are eating away at those new houses.  Inside his new house, Paul is terrorized by his older brother Erik, the football hero.  His parents are blind to the torment dished out by Erik and can only focus on the Erik Fisher Football Dream.

Paul tries not to let it get to him until he’s kicked off the middle school soccer team because of his disability.  (Did he really damage his eyes by staring at a solar eclipse?)  Then a sinkhole swallows most of Paul’s middle school.  The chaos afterwards opens up a new opportunity for soccer at a different school, Tangerine Middle School.  The students there are much rougher, but Paul earns the respect of the War Eagles on and off the field.   With their friendship, he gains the courage to see the truth about his community and to confront the dark secrets in his family’s past.  Ultimately, he decide if he has the courage to speak the truth to people who don’t want to hear it.

Savvy lives for basketball.  She’s entering the eighth grade, is six foot two (and still growing), and can nail her three point shot anytime, anywhere.  She’s had to move across the country from New Mexico to Rhode Island, and basketball gets her through it.  With her new friend Gonzo she tries out for–and makes–the elite 18U basketball team, the Fire.  As her new coach tells her, she has the raw potential and talent, but it needs development.  The older girls push her around on the court, and Savvy finds herself sitting on the bench for the first time.

Meanwhile, there are problems at home.  Savvy’s older sister Callie makes the varsity cheerleading squad just to find that she’s grown too heavy to be a flier.  She also snags a boyfriend–the football player Savvy has a crush on.  Mom and Dad are stressed about work and finances.  Aunt Betty, who took in the family, ends up in the hospital and comes home frail and too weak to care for her sheep.  Savvy finds unexpected peace in caring for the sheep under Aunt Betty’s guidance.  As an added bonus, lifting all those hay bales builds the strength she needs on the court.

The ultimate crisis finally erupts when pills are found in Savvy’s gym bag during a tournament.  Savvy swears that the pills–steroids–are not hers, but no one entirely believes her.  Savvy is suspended from the team.  Has all her hard work been for nothing?  Will she loose the one thing that keeps her going?  Or will she lose something even more important?

Once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down.  I like Savvy.  She chaffed under Coach Fitz’s criticism and constant drills, but she did them and grew as a player.  Even when life through the worst at her, she struggled to keep going.  She can be cocky (after all, she is a good basketball player) and she loses her temper.  She gets respect on the court, but has to put up with jerks at school.  She is also willing to own up to her mistakes and learn from them.  She doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind, even when people may not want to hear her. 

I can’t wait to put Boost (Penguin Speak 2008) by Kathy Mackel in the hands of my students.  Savvy is a strong, talented athlete anyone can look up to.

Trevor and Sam may look just alike, but they live in very different worlds.  Trevor was born into Hollywood “royalty.”  His dad is a powerful producer, and his mother is a famous actress.  He stars in major motion pictures as well.  What else could he want besides the life of luxury that surrounds him?  Just the one thing he can’t have–a normal life as a baseball player on a real baseball team.  Sam, on the other hand, lives with his dad in a run-down trailer next to the garbage dump.  Both of them have dreams of a better life.  Sam lives baseball, and has a chance (if his team wins the championship and he earns MVP of the tournament) to make it to the USC Elite Training Center.  His dad may be a high school English teacher who loves to quote Shakespeare, but he dreams of making it as a screen writer.

Pinch Hit (Harper 2012) by Tim Green tells the tale of when these two worlds collide.  While his dad is pitching a script, Sam gets called to be a body double for Trevor on the set of his new movie.  They immediately notice the uncanny resemblance they share and concoct a plan to switch places.  Trevor will finally get to play baseball on a real team.  In return, he promises to get a green light on the script Sam’s dad has written.  It will all work out, won’t it?

Of course not.  That’s where the adventure kicks in.  Trevor may have spent hours in a batting cage, but he’s never faced a pitcher with a curve ball.  Sam knows nothing about acting.  Trevor wants to take on bully Klum off the field.  Sam wants to use his new power to track down his (and Trevor’s?) birth mother.  Frantic text messages and coaching from actress McKenna might get them through the rough spots.  Or will it all come crashing down?

I enjoyed the humor and the action in this modern take on The Prince and the Pauper.  Chapters alternate between Sam and Trevor, so you get to see what happens to both boys.  Sam is completely lost in the world of the rich and the powerful, but soon comes to appreciate all it offers.  Trevor handles the stench of the garbage dump pretty well and relishes the chance to see how his baseball stacks up in real competition.  Even better, I won this copy (it’s even signed!) from a GoodReads discussion with Tim Green.  I can’t wait to hear what other readers–and Tim Green himself–have to say about this book.

Who wants to read it first?

Felton Reinstein is turning sixteen this summer, and his life is turning upside down ever since he started growing and growing and growing.  Now he’s not just tall (and constantly hungry), but he is also fast–stupid fast.  The track and football coaches want him bad.  All those jocks who used to bully him now want to be his friend.  It’s a good thing (or is it) since his best friend Gus is spending the summer in Venezuela with family and his mom is freaking out.  Oh yeah, he also might have a girlfriend, Aleah, the beautiful and amazingly talented pianist who is living in Gus’s house for the summer.

Stupid Fast (Sourcebooks Fire 2011) was not what I was expecting (a sports story along the lines of Carl Deuker or Mike Lupica), but I enjoyed it very much.  Rather than creating an action packed sports story, Geoff Herbach explores a story of family and friendship and romance and bullies and depression and piano.

I loved Felton. He is awkward and dorky and not sure at all about being a jock.  He is an accidental athlete who slowly comes to accept it.  Harder to accept is the chaos erupting at his home as his mother dives into a depression bigger than all of them.  Felton worries as his little brother burns all his clothes and turns into a pirate.  He rejoices as Aleah seems to be as into him as he is to her.  When it all gets to be too much, he runs and runs and runs.  It is not until he learns to reach out and ask for help that he learns just how strong he is.