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Tom Palmer's The Soccer Diaries: Rocky Takes L.A. is a football story for 10 year olds about a girl flying off to a summer soccer camp with far more than football on her mind.
Rocky Race is a midfielder who loves breaking up the other team's attacks. In the last minutes of a big match she makes a perfect tackle and ends up with a gash on her shin and a sock full of blood. Her first thought? Whether it'll stop her going to California.
Because she's won a place at a ten-day camp near the beach in Los Angeles. It's a dream. It's also scary.
Her dad died a year ago after a long illness. Her brother Roy plays for Melchester Rovers and is away a lot. So Rocky feels awful about leaving her mum on her own, and she can't find a way to say so.
On the plane she forces herself to stay awake, because since Dad died she sometimes wakes up shouting or crying. Then a glamorous English girl called Alex plops down next to her, knows her name, and has her giggling about whether they'll have to say "soccer" and "cleats".
At the camp there's Kim, her kind American roommate, and two brilliant defenders, Mahsa and Naomi. There are rival schools who win every single year. "Not this year," says Rocky.
And there's Alex, who starts to look a bit less lovely. She mocks the Americans' words behind their backs and sneers at the girls who study.
It's very much Rocky's head you're in. Short, punchy sentences. Lists of her worries (reason to be anxious, one...). Matches that move as fast as she does. And a lot of fun with American words (what IS a scrimmage?).
This one reads older than the shelf. Rocky is fifteen and the story is about grief as much as football. There are her night terrors, her guilt about leaving home, a line about Mum's nightly bottle of wine, gossip about someone's sister in rehab and chat about GCSEs.
A younger reader who has lost someone might find it hits hard. An older, football-mad reader will probably love how kindly it handles all of that (Kim waking her gently after a nightmare is a lovely moment).
If they're after more of Tom Palmer's football with a worry underneath it, Football Academy: Free Kick would be a good next pick. James is a talented young defender who isn't sure he wants the future his dad, a former England player, has planned for him.
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