The team of five friends is getting ready for their first junior derby league bout. Everyone is polishing their specific skills- one girl is very fast and always has the jammer position. Kenzie is great at coming up with new strategic moves, Tomoko is good at blocking, etc. But Shelly (whose viewpoint this novel is from) doesn’t feel like she’s particularly good at any one thing. She’s always drawing though. In an effort to stand out and feel special to the team, Shelly tries turning some of her sketch ideas into actual gear accessories that could help her team win. Like glitter to burst out in a cloud startling the opponents, or something to make Bree extra fast, for example. It was crazy that she thought she could do this in just a few days- but I’ve seen kids get fixated on a wild imagining that’s difficult (or actually impossible) to bring to life. When she presents the items, eager to impress, her teammates are taken aback and skeptical. Will the stuff even work? could it be considered risky? Things don’t at all go as Shelly had hoped, but in the end, the one thing she had prepared and thought the least of, turned out to be what really made her team shine.
I didn’t like this book quite as much as the first one. Shelly’s ideas just seemed absurdly impractical. It was a bit frustrating reading a whole story about something you know is probably going to fall flat in the end. The illustrations are nicely fluid and expressive. And I like that the one girl who realized she didn’t like skating and had left the team earlier on, showed up with a significant part to play in this storyline too.
Borrowed from the public library.
