Game Day Goodnight! Goodnight, Football by Michael Dahl

THE BLEACHERS ARE FULL,
FOR A VERY GOOD REASON.

THE BIG GAME IS TONIGHT.
IT'S FOOTBALL SEASON!

Full of excitement, the fans stream into the stadium, bundled up for the autumn weather, with cushions and streamers and high hopes for the home team.

Cheerleaders shout and leap as the teams take the field, and the bands strike up their fight songs. The drama builds as the two teams line up for the first play.

And then the game begins.

THE RECEIVER BREAKS LOOSE
AND STANDS ALL ALONE....

REACHES UP, GRABS THE BALL...
... HE'S IN THE END ZONE!

It's all there--the quarterback's snap, the clash of the linemen, the scent of hot dogs and popcorn in the air, the celebration after the touchdown, and all the fun of the spectacle of football, from the kickoff to the final handshakes between winners and losers, in Michael Dahl's new Goodnight Football (Sports Illustrated Kids Bedtime Books) (Capstone Young Readers, 2017), as his young football fan enjoys his first game. And as the crowd exits the stadium, he remembers to bid all of it a good goodnight:

GOODNIGHT, BLEACHERS,
GOODNIGHT, FANS!

GOODNIGHT, FIELD
AND CONCESSION STANDS.

In most bedtime stories, children settle down with Teddy bears or toy trucks, but this young football fan falls off to sleep in his helmet, still holding on to his football, not long after that trademark moon rises over the goalposts. Dahl's rhyming verse catches all the pageantry of the football game for families who are football fans, making use of terms along the way to familiarize youngsters with the vocabulary of the game. As she did in Dahl's first sports bedtime tale, Goodnight Baseball (Sports Illustrated Kids Bedtime Books) (see review here), artist Christina Forshay's illustrations begin with endpapers of the gridiron and catch the movement, the colorful action, of the big game in soft autumnal tones that lead the listening child toward sleepytime in his own bed.

Gut Check: Gutless by Carl Deuker

Early in eighth grade I caught a break. Our goalie didn't show up for a game and Coach looked long and hard over his bench and said, "Brock, get in the goal." That game I stopped every shot.

I thought I was a natural goalkeeper--good hands, quick reactions, foot speed--I had it all. Then came the game against Addams Middle School.

We were winning, with only a few minutes left. The ball somehow popped loose, and a blond guy took off down the sideline.... bearing down on me. He wasn't trying to deke me either; he was coming right at me, intent on rolling right over me.

I knew what to do: charge him, cut down on his angle. I took a step and then fear paralyzed me. I took a step back, tripped, and fell. He roared right by me.

Brock knows he's failed the gut check moment. He now knows what he's suspected all long: he's absolutely terrified to take a hit.

And then, during that summer before high school, Brock is noticed by the father of the football team's quarterback Hunter Gates, who beckons him across the field. He's noticed Brock's speed on the soccer field and asks him to work with the passer as long receiver. Brock dislikes and fears the arrogant Hunter, but something makes him agree, a desire he didn't know he had. And it's true; Brock and Hunter click.

I caught Hunter's bullets--most of them. His father came over.

"Have you thought about playing football? With your speed and those hands you could be a star."

He winked. "Girls go for wide receivers. You could have your pick."

Brock knows that a guy who is afraid to take a hit is not a natural for football, but the coach is pleased with his speed and because of his slender frame offers to use him only for long passes where he can score or sideline the ball without much danger of being tackled. And so Brock becomes an unlikely varsity football player for Crown Hill High School.

Although girls aren't exactly falling all over him as promised, Brock realizes that being on the team and giving Hunter a chance at racking up statistics has another virtue. He's safe from the nasty bullying that Hunter and his cabal exact on anyone they pick as a victim--especially Brock's first new friend at Crown Hill, Richie Fang. Richie is a natural target for Hunter--short, Chinese, brilliant at math, the violin, chess, and every other nerdy skill, but outgoing, always joking, and totally unwilling to kowtow to Hunter and his henchmen. On signs announcing Richie's awards, they change his last name from Fang to "Fag." And when Richie refuses to be intimidated, Hunter and his friends "can" Richie, forcing him into a garbage can and rolling it down the stairs.

Although Brock still fears Hunter, he remains friends with Richie, sharing worries about a seriously ill parent, playing online chess, and helping him prepare a project for national competition. And then before his sophomore year, Brock has an idea. Richie is a standout soccer player, and the football team has no decent kicker. Brock convinces Richie to try out, and with a little coaching, he becomes the team's kicking specialist. With Brock stronger and faster and Richie punting and point kicking, the Crown Hill team makes it to the playoff game against the mighty O'Dea High team. Late in the game with the score 35-35, Richie kicks a field goal that puts them ahead with only 20 seconds left. O'Dea fumbles the ball, and Crown Hill recovers and mounts a goal-line stand. With three seconds left Coach calls a time out.

"Okay!" he shouted. "Go into punt formation, but don't punt. Just let the clock run down, and then take a knee. Wait till you see zeroes, and then kneel."

00.02.

00.01

00.00

I heard the horn, and then I saw Richie throw the ball into the air and run to join the guys jumping crazily along the sidelines.

We'd won!

Only they hadn't. Not knowing the fine points of football, Richie had not taken a knee. And in football the game isn't over until the ball is downed. One of O'Dea's linemen in the end zone had caught the ball that Richie joyfully tossed high, in soccer style celebration, and O'Dea takes the win.

And Brock knows that Hunter Gates and the others are sure to take furious revenge on Richie, and soon.

There's no easy win for anyone in Carl Deuker's forthcoming Gutless (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), a coming-of-age story worked out on the playing fields and in the halls of a high school. Brock faces the ultimate gut check in a dramatic climax that few readers will see coming. Everything in this novel rings true: the setting is realistic, the characters are skillfully drawn and the plot develops naturally but relentlessly from the interplay of their personalities. Readers attracted to this novel in hopes of a hard-hitting sports saga will not be disappointed by the game play passages, but will be challenged by the unexpected ethical choices embedded in Deuker's premise.

As a more-than-sports novel with a serious life-changing theme, Gutless compares well with Kwame Christopher's 2015 Newbery-winning The Crossover, also published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Rafe Scores! Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts

Finding a dollar on the ground is special. But getting into a "special needs" program with "special" classes and no guarantee of getting through middle school anytime especially soon?

What did all of this mean, exactly? Was I just plain dumb? Could I have gotten out of it if I'd paid more attention in school? If I didn't have an imaginary friend who I used to talk to all the time?

If I wasn't so weird?

Rafe is back where he started, at Hill Valley Middle School, the scene of the crime, so to speak, where he succeeded in breaking all the official 100 School Rules and managed to get himself expelled and subsequently suspended at not one, but two, private art schools. Now, after a sentence from the Hills Valley School Board to a summer at a boot camp for troublesome kids which had him hanging from rocky crags and swimming icy rivers, Rafe is permitted to enroll again at Hill Valley Middle. And he soon discovers that his sixth-grade nemesis "Miller the Killer," who subjected him to daily "swirlie" shampoos in the boy's bathroom, is still there, two-times bigger and three times meaner, and promising to beat him up anytime he can catch him alone.

And it gets worse.

Rafe is now placed in a "special needs" class, held daily in the "fish bowl," a conference room with wide windows allowing anyone in the HVMS Library to observe the SPED kids in Mr. Fanucci's class. But Rafe makes his first real (i.e., visible) friend, Flip, an otherwise genial ADHD kid who is also a jock, quarterback of the HV flag football team. And when he leaves Miller the Killer in the dust in a chase through the middle schools' halls, the winded but impresssed Miller makes Rafe an offer he can't refuse--make the team as a fleet-footed wide receiver and Miller will refrain from takedowns for the year. Flip amiably agrees to get Rafe up to speed, so to speak, on football skills, and he discovers that if Miller the Killer and his fellow linemen can clear him a space through their opponents' defense, Rafe can SCORE!

With HVMS on a winning streak, Rafe suddenly finds that status as football hero not only earns him a place at the popular jocks' lunch table, but also gets him some surprising attention from cute girls--all but his crush, Jeanne Galleto, who seems always to be on concession bar duty when he speeds to one of his big touchdowns. Still, there's hope there, and Rafe seems to have broken his bad luck streak.

But for some reason his life seems to be missing something in the excitement department. He has a private talk with his imaginary muse, Leo the Silent.

"Don't do anything," Leo says.

In case you haven't noticed, you're not getting into trouble. You're not breaking any rules--or even trying.  You're just playing football, drawing your comics, hanging out, and going to school. That's called normal, dude. Relax."

But then Rafe comes up with a way to follow his mentor Mrs. Donatello's advice to use his art talents to "make a difference." He creates a secret identity, S.A.M. (Sam the Art Man) and starts early morning postings around the school of parodies of art classics which satirize the school bullies. Rafe's clever cartooning skills soon become a local media sensation. Rafe feels like he's doing clandestine community service, but when his cover is blown, he discovers he's been breaking an obscure privacy law, and, just his luck, he's in back in Principal Striker's office hot seat again, in James Patterson's and Chris Tebbetts' latest in their best-selling series, Middle School series, Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck(Little, Brown and Company, 2015). Patterson and Tebbetts' formula for drop-dead-funny middle school stories is still scoring with reviewers and readers, and with an older-and-wiser, semi-successful Rafe, this one is truly up to speed with their other best-selling titles in the laughs department.

Read reviews of the whole series here.