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

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The six other girls she recruits for her soccer/football team are unique, all with their own ways of handling things. Many young people will also empathise with Jaz when she is often punished for her reactions to another student’s behaviour and even wrongly accused of things that she didn’t do. Jaz is finding school difficult and is being labeled a troublemaker, but things are also difficult for her at home because her parents are fighting a lot.

It shows a team of girls who care about each other and support each other, despite their many differences. 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.The team wants to enter a girls tournament but is up against sports misogyny in their own school, difficult teachers, and no initial funding. It is also about learning to self-regulate emotionally and navigating traumatic situations, like your family breaking up. It will surely encourage children that they don't need to blame themselves for their parents' disagreements. Jaz is a brilliantly dynamic and determined protagonist and I can’t wait to read more about the rest of the dream team. Perfect for KS2 readers who love first-person writing, football, book series and girls who dare to be different.

The discrimination against Jaz as a girl wanting to be taken seriously in football (from both adults and children) feels frustrating and unfair, but Jaz is passionate and triumphant to show what can be achieved with a little determination.Jaz Santos gave casual but profound glimpses of a great and under-explored context too, young people growing up in mixed-heritage (and multi-lingual) homes. Occasionally a middle grade book comes along that makes me more excited with each page I turn, and JAZ SANTOS VS. Boys’ and girls’ football is treated completely differently, regardless of the level it’s played at, and this stems from sexist ideas about what girls can and can’t do as well as boys can. This dynamic resembles the current world we live in, in which children and young adults are sometimes more mature in handling conflicts and accepting accountability than adults.