Getting In The Game - Hardcover

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Gr. 4-7. Joanna is the only girl on the middle-school hockey team, and she doesn't care that everyone, except her best friend, Ben, is pressuring her to get off the ice. When^B Ben takes up with her worst enemy--rich, cruel Valerie--the public ridicule of the girl athlete becomes worse. The fast sports action in this first novel is absolutely thrilling, building to the climax halfway through the story, when Jo plays brilliantly for the team and enables the star player to make the winning goal. But the second half of the book barely mentions the game as Jo deals with the school lunchroom jungle and difficulties at home, including Grandpa's Alzheimer's and move to a nursing home. But Jo's first-person, present-tense narrative is fast and funny, especially the view of portentous adult authority figures, and readers who are caught up by the sports will stay around for the family and friendship drama. Hazel Rochman
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Grade 5-7 -Joanna Giordano prefers ice hockey to figure skating and is determined to make her middle school team. Despite opposition from the other athletes (all male), the coach, the school principal, the father of her friend Ben-also trying out for the team-and many of the other seventh-grade girls, she perseveres and does indeed make the cut. Ben also makes it, but his desire to fit in with the other boys leads him to turn away from Jo. She also has to deal with her parents' separation, caused largely by her father's inability to control his temper, and her grandfather's progressive Alzheimer's symptoms. Jo manages to handle the various pressures and performs well on the ice when given a chance to get in the game, earning kudos from the coach and even a grudging compliment from her chief tormentor. Jo is a believable teen, albeit wise beyond her years, with a supportive mother, an older brother, and a friend who help her cope with a set of problems that might well make a lesser mortal throw in the towel, or at least hang up her skates. The rushed pace of the final chapter and a half is disappointing in an otherwise acceptable work of sports fiction.-Elaine Fort Weischedel, Milton Public Library, MA
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