The Dream Team: Jaz Santos vs. the World

Great book about a footballer, would recommend!

I would recommend this book to someone else because the main topic is football and I love football. I liked the descriptions.

This book was about a girl named Jasmina-Santos Campell,who wanted to reach her dream goal, to be like her own favourite footballer Rachel Yanky.This is a interesting book for people who love football like me!

It is very good great for teamwork

I really enjoyed it great teamwork

I am so sad that she got kicked out she is such an inspiration

I play football too and I’m a girl.The boys think they’re better but girls can prove themselves to.It was very encouraging

I wanted this book in the classroom after an awesome summer of sport and after the Euros earlier this week where England got to the final. I love that it’s based on girls football and that the main character is Portuguese. I thought it would be a great book to send positive messages about what girls can do to the young people I teach. However, I wasn’t prepared for how much heart and feeling this book contained, it’s storyline runs much deeper than football and I cried whilst reading it. Such a great book and I’ll definitely order the sequel. I think this book completes my challenge, but there are still two weeks of the holidays to go, albeit busy ones. Looking forward to getting in some bonus reads before school starts!

It took me a while to get in to this book. However after a slow start I became engrossed and couldn’t put it down. It annoyed me slightly that although it is set in a primary school it feels more structured like a secondary school or possibly a private one (although it doesn’t specify this) - to me that made it less relatable. Initially I thought it was going to be a book about football which is not really my thing. It is about so much more though. This is a book about acceptance- that sometimes things go wrong and that isn’t your fault. A book about hopes and dream - Jaz is a girl who wants to succeed and along with an unlikely group of girls (who become great friends) they achieve their dreams. It’s not an easy ride but the work together. This books look at family relationships and their breakdowns, friendship - with its ups and downs, fairness and justice, sexism to name but a few. This book won me over and I really enjoyed it. Recommend for age 8+

Really enjoyed the story that dealt with family separation in a real life way - Jaz is inspirational to young people everywhere!

There is much to like about this book, a story about a football mad girl caught up in the middle of a marriage breakdown. Jaz Santos is a believable and likeable character, both warm and vulnerable. Her perceptions of her parents’ marriage and her own subsequent insecurities are heart rending and recognisable to anyone who has endured similar. The football passages are concise and suspenseful. So why the 3 stars? Jaz’s voice is authentic but in this case good writing and an authentic voice do not always go hand in hand. Sometimes this book reads too much like creative writing written by an eleven year old girl. The book is also too long for the readership. Nothing much happens until page 150 bar a few school scrapes, a sleepover and one training session. The jeopardy should be introduced much earlier. I think a good editor could have pulled this book into shape with some judicious use of a red pen and some nifty rewriting suggestions. But DO stock this in your school library or classroom - it fills a real gap and I think the author will grow stronger. Better still, wield your own mental red pen and read it aloud to your class! Ideal for Year 4.