Secret Weapon

April 1, 2000
Gr 2-4-This well-written series successfully combines soccer action with good sportsmanship and family values. The characters seem like real people with flaws and problems. Hat Trick focuses on Stookie Norris, who desperately tries to score three goals in every game after his older brother is featured in the local paper for doing just that-scoring a hat trick. Only his shots matter to him because the more he takes, the more likely he is to achieve his goal. It takes a wise coach and a good friend to make Stookie into a team player. In Secret Weapon, Lisa is self-conscious because she is short, which makes it difficult for her to make a throw-in. When her coach discovers that she has gymnastic ability, he encourages her to work on a secret-weapon flip throw that helps her team gain points. One black-and-white ink illustration appears in each chapter. Facial expressions convey the characters' emotions and pictures of the field action capture the excitement of the games.-Barb Lawler, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA

Copyright 2000 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2000
Suitable for the reluctant-reader/avid-athlete crowd, these easy-to-digest chapter books combine lots of soccer action with formulaic lessons for life on and off the field. In "Secret Weapon", Lisa, one of the smallest players, wows her team with a flip throw-in. "Hat Trick" follows Stookie's one-man game plan: hogging the ball rather than passing to his teammates. The black-and-white line drawings show cleat-clad characters fully engaged in their sport.

(Copyright 2000 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)