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

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The plot overall was a pretty standard sports fiction plot, with the addition of some other themes, but I don't think they were handled particularly well. 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. There is a wonderful light touch to the writing that makes you bounce along with Jaz and will her into succeeding.

When Jaz finds a leaflet advertising a girls’ football tournament, she seizes the opportunity to take back some control. The school won't provide money or a coach for a girls' football team, so Jaz convinces a group of friends to join her and raise the money themselves. Perfect for KS2 readers who love first-person writing, football, book series and girls who dare to be different.

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. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. You don't need to be a soccer(football) player or even know much about the sport to enjoy this story! 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. I requested this book not knowing it was based in Brighton, that’s where I’m from and grew up and could really imagine all these families and all these children where I grew up.

The novel begins with Jaz feeling helpless with the direction of her life: she gets kicked out of the dance club, gets bullied by the VIP (Very Irritating People), and gets rejected from the school’s football team because she is a girl. I’m not a football fan but I still loved this book, ‘Jaz Santos vs the World’ is a wonderfully warm, inclusive story about friendship, teamwork and family. but some wise words along the way help Jaz to understand that life’s circumstances do not have to define her, and her own personal successes and failures don’t have to be tied up with the things in life that are simply beyond her control. 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.This is a middle grade children's book about a girl who starts her own girl's football team while dealing with her parents splitting up. After spotting a flyer for a local girls’ football tournament, Jaz convinces a group of her classmates to form a team and enter the competition. Now I've got a team of seven very different girls and we need to work together, to be taken seriously as footballers. Ultimately I decided it would be too mean to knock it down, particularly since it should be noted that I am not the target audience for this book. Determined to fix everything, she creates her own girl’s football team to be the star her mum always wanted.