The Dream Team: Jaz Santos vs. the World (The Dream Team, 1)

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When Jaz’s Mum and Dad start having problems, Jaz works out the perfect way to stop them arguing—she decides to start a girls’ football team and win the local tournament. From fundraising to training, Jaz leaves no stone unturned - with her passionate hopes of proving that girls can be taken seriously in football matched only by her desire to get mum back. I didn’t play sports as a child for similar reasons to Jaz and I wish I had a friend like her who encouraged everyone to give it a try and do their best. The boys in Jaz’ class were threatened by a girl who is talented at football and many of the teachers had no interest in helping the girls to get funding or even training for their team.

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. It will surely encourage children that they don't need to blame themselves for their parents' disagreements. It’s a fantastic story, showing kids they shouldn’t give up on their dreams, especially when they are discouraged by people with outdated ideas on what girls and boys can and can’t do. Perhaps by winning the tournament, she can not only prove that girls have got game, but also convince her parents to be happy together again.So when her parents' fighting eventually leads to her mother moving out of the house, Jaz focuses all her energy on football, putting together a team that she hopes can win the Brighton Girls’ Under-11s Seven-a-Side Football Tournament. It truthfully explores the sexism in society and schools, whereby boys get all the football equipment, time and investment, showing how girls are shut out of sport from the earliest age. Teachers local to me in East Sussex may be interested to know that the book is set near Brighton and references the Seagulls. I believe this was a debut, so maybe in the future this aspect will get better; I don't think I will be reading the other books in this companion series, but I really believe there's room for improvement. The excitement when my feet made contact with the ball to dribble or kick, the spark that shot through me as I ran down the wings, and the pride when the ball rolled past the posts.

The rest of the team were great too, I loved their mentor figure Rhiannon who has a very interesting plot arc of her own, and Jaz’s family were really well represented as being flawed and imperfect yet still loving. The novel begins with Jaz feeling helpless with the direction of her life: she gets kicked out of the dance club, gets bullied by the VIP (Very Irritating People), and gets rejected from the school’s football team because she is a girl. Thinking carefully about how to sell the idea to her classmates, Jaz pours heart and soul into rallying a team of girls to prepare for the tournament. but some wise words along the way help Jaz to understand that life’s circumstances do not have to define her, and her own personal successes and failures don’t have to be tied up with the things in life that are simply beyond her control. If you have a child in your life who really loves football/soccer, you could gift them this book, as I think it will be enjoyable for them even if I didn't love it.They also have to learn how to play as an actual team before they can think of playing well at the tournament.

But Jaz knows herself well enough to know that she wants, and she's determined and clever enough to push past the NOs and a system that's intent on maintaining the out-dated and incredibly sexist norms to go out and get what she wants: a girl's 7-on-7 soccer club. Now I’ve got a team of seven very different girls and we need to work together, to be taken seriously as footballers.The first instalment in a new series, “The Dream Team,” is centred around football and addressing issues like friendship, families, and sexism. It shows a team of girls who care about each other and support each other, despite their many differences. Jaz Santos vs the World is the first in a new series about a girl who gathers an unlikely group of friends together to make their own girls football team. Thank you to Penguin Random House Children’s UK and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for my honest review. I requested this book not knowing it was based in Brighton, that’s where I’m from and grew up and could really imagine all these families and all these children where I grew up.