The Dream Team: Jaz Santos vs. the World (The Dream Team, 1)

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My child really enjoyed the book, and read it very quickly and she is looking forward to the next one in the series. Priscilla Mante’s debut contemporary novel for children aged 9+ (the first in a series) is strong on the importance of organisation, teamwork and facing your fears and great at promoting women’s football while also tackling (no pun intended) the sexism that girls face in the game. So, what works: the diversity and representation of the characters, the very readable prose and the positive messages for the audience. There is a wonderful light touch to the writing that makes you bounce along with Jaz and will her into succeeding.

Jaz Santos isn’t the most graceful dancer and she’s always getting into trouble at school, but the one thing she loves more than anything else is playing football. They also have to learn how to play as an actual team before they can think of playing well at the tournament. It didn't have that extra spark that could have really hooked me (I might be an adult but there are some MG books that I truly love), but that's probably because I am not at all interested in sports.I gazed up at the luminous purple stars on my white ceiling and wished hard that I could be like one of them. The first instalment in a new series, “The Dream Team,” is centred around football and addressing issues like friendship, families, and sexism. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning ( CEFR). It is an important message for all of us: to believe in our excellence and undeniable talent even when the systems in which we work to be accepted continuously attempt to deny and refuse us. We find her blaming herself for the troubles at home and feeling responsible for some adults’ incompetence.

She likes Dad's homemade pizza, she wants Mum to pay some attention, and her sights are set on football stardom. I think Jaz’s wonderfully distinctive and fun narrative voice was probably my biggest highlight here, because I just loved the way she saw the world and all her nicknames for people and I got so frustrated alongside her when people just kept misunderstanding her. While this isn’t a book that is likely to become a new classic, Sophie would still recommend it to young readers, especially sports fans, and she still plans to pick up the next book in the series to see how the Bamrock Stars story continues.I might be a tad bit biased, but I’m giving this 5 stars for the amount of effort, joy, heart and soul I put into it.

Serious issues are explored with sensitivity and humour, creating a funny, moving and uplifting tale. Whether that be lies from school mates getting her banned from playing football (her favourite thing in the world), teachers and boys who thought the boys team was more important than her girls team, or her parents splitting up at home. But after a shaky start, seven very different personalities to manage, and no one at school taking the girls' team seriously, football stardom feels a long way off. Jaz Santos vs the World is the first in a new series about a girl who gathers an unlikely group of friends together to make their own girls football team. But Jaz knows herself well enough to know that she wants, and she's determined and clever enough to push past the NOs and a system that's intent on maintaining the out-dated and incredibly sexist norms to go out and get what she wants: a girl's 7-on-7 soccer club.So when her parents' fighting eventually leads to her mother moving out of the house, Jaz focuses all her energy on football, putting together a team that she hopes can win the Brighton Girls’ Under-11s Seven-a-Side Football Tournament. While things may not be going right in other areas of her life football gives her an escape and a way of dealing with everything else. This story has lovely overall themes of trying your hardest, kindness, friendship and never giving up. Jaz’s mum, from Angola, and her father, from Scotland, no longer get on – and when her mum nearly burns the house down, her parents decide it is time for Mum to move out. The story followed Jaz Santos who decides to compete in a football competition and starts a new team.