Fiction - Sports & Recreation, Fiction - Social Issues, Fiction - Clothes & Fashion, Fiction - Family Life
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Overview
Nine-year-old Venus Macquire is ready to trade smiling for the camera for nailing a soccer ball into the net. Her mother isn't thrilled. She's been grooming Venus for supermodel status since her daughter was three. Everyone at school knows about Venus's famous commercials, and some of the girls on the soccer squad don't think she's cut out for athletic competition. Thing is, Venus is a soccer natural--and she almost has her team convinced. When she's scheduled to be the Cinderella doll at a toy store grand opening, the would-be soccer star has to show everyone, even herself, that her real goal is not to be special. It's to be the real Venus--a regular kid, with a kick!Editorials
Library Journal
Gr 2-4-Venus wants to quit modeling and play soccer like a normal nine-year-old, but when she joins a team, her mother is less than enthusiastic. Finally, the girl resorts to drastic measures; she chops off her beautiful curls to get out of dressing up like a Cinderella doll for a toy-store opening, an event that conflicts with the Comets' first game. Tamar fills her tale with over-the-top exaggerations, yet the humor falls short. Venus's mother is a stock character, a former Miss Texas Oil Well with a rhinestone oil well tiara in her memory bank. She lavishes all her attention on her only child, hoping that her daughter will have a future consisting of more than a bookkeeping job. Venus is teased and treated rudely by many of her teammates either because they are jealous or because she shows up to practice dressed in white shorts trimmed with gold ribbon. Ultimately she does make a friend who has the same competitive spirit toward soccer as Venus had previously when auditioning for her modeling jobs. However, readers never develop sympathy for any of the characters.-Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
Venus Maguire, aging child model, longs for something more. Her commercials for diapers and baby products still air on television, but at age nine, she’s getting a little too old for these roles. Her stage mother has indulged her tantrums and pouting over the years, because she wants her daughter to be even more famous than she was as Miss Texas Oil pageant. Now she really doesn’t want Venus to spoil her looks while playing soccer. Chock full of cardboard caricatures: Venus with her sparkly crown and advanced knowledge of make up, the striving mother, and the jealous trio of mean girls who thwart Venus as she tries her feet at soccer, this has little to recommend it. While there is a dearth of good sports books for young girls, this effort, with predictable plot--was there any question that Venus would find herself and new friends on the field?--and choppy writing, misses the goal. (Fiction. 7-9)Book Details
Published
October 20, 2011
Publisher
Lerner Publishing Group
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780761385936