The Kicks – Saving the Team

Alex Morgan's The Kicks Saving the Team is a football and friendship story for 8 year olds about a new girl who finds out her new school's team is truly terrible.

What happens

Devin Burke has just moved from Connecticut to California. She's starting seventh grade without Kara, her best friend back home (they were going to be co-captains together).

The first day is rough. She eats lunch alone on the library steps, then hides in a toilet cubicle to text Kara. Who hasn't had a first day like that?

Things look up in PE. One huge kickball kick and two girls, Jessi and Emma, are telling her to try out for soccer. (It's an American book, so it's soccer here, not football.) Then they burst out laughing. The Kentville Kangaroos are awful. They won one game last year, and that might have been because the other team didn't turn up.

Tryouts are total chaos. Everyone chases the ball in one big herd. The goalie, Frida, is trying NOT to make the team. Zoe freezes the second anyone watches her. And Mirabelle, an eighth grader in very fancy boots, is good and knows it. She's also really mean.

Then it turns out everyone who tried out made the team. Practice is on a dusty park pitch with two orange bins for goals, because the boys get the proper field. The coach is lovely but so relaxed she forgot to put the first game on the schedule. And somehow Devin ends up co-captain, with Mirabelle of all people backing her. Why would she do that?

Reading it is like spending the week as Devin's best mate. She's honest about her nerves (the butterflies in her tummy keep inviting more friends over) and very funny about her family. Dad does spaceship noises on the school run. Mum is obsessed with water and green smoothies.

The friendships are the heart of it. Jessi swaps a sock with Devin before tryouts and they're sock sisters from then on.

Devin and her friends are at an American middle school, so they're a few years older than this shelf, and there's some mean-girl sneering. It's pretty gentle. If your reader has ever moved school, or been the new kid hoping someone saves them a seat, they'll feel this one.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl who'd rather be on a pitch than anywhere else, try Jaz Santos vs the World. Jaz is in Year 6 near Brighton, plays left striker for the Bramrock Stars and has to put up with boys who won't pass to her.