PW Publishers Weekly

Review Source: Publishers Weekly

Review Date: 2009-11-16

Copyright: (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In 2005, an army veteran won $1 million by throwing a football through a target during a halftime show at a college football game. Lupica (The Big Field) inserts a 13-year-old in the contestant role and moves the action to Massachusetts, where QB Nate Brodie stars for his eighth-grade team and idolizes the New England Patriots' Tom Brady. The pressure to win is intense-Nate's father has lost his job, the house is close to foreclosure, and his best friend, Abby, needs money to go to a special school since she is rapidly going blind. Though the entire cast is a bit too perfect, many kids will relate to Nate's fears about his family's finances: "You were going along, having what felt like a pretty cool life, and then all of a sudden came the economy trying to wreck everything." The ups and downs of Nate's peewee football team provide sports play-by-play, but the thread that will pull readers through is whether Nate can save his and Abby's families with one well-aimed spiral on Thanksgiving night. Ages 10-up. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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