TACKLING DAD

Missing the fun of Peewee league, seventh-grader Cassie Fowler leaps at the chance to sign up for the middle-school football team when her former coach invites her and her friend Molly joins her. As a kicker, Molly finds the game easy and fun, but Cassie is a running back and finds that making her way down the football field turns out to be at least as difficult as making her way between her divorced parents. Cassie’s first-person narrative reveals her unrealistic expectations and the determination with which she perseveres and succeeds. The story is slight and the characters, except Cassie, cardboard, but readers curious about football at that level will be captured by the details. A particularly humorous scene has Cassie and Molly completely mystified by the pads and pants they are issued, and much is made of the utility of frozen peas for soothing bruises. Just in time for the football season. (Fiction. 9-12)