I am so glad I got the chance to read and review Jump! by JG Nolan!
Jump! is a middle grade novel about an 11-year-old football (soccer if you're Canadian like me) player named Robbie who sustains numerous bone fractures and is told he can never play the sport he loves again. With some dedication to training and time spent learning about the history of the Celtic Football Club and some of their most legendary players, Robbie learns to never lose hope and that with dedication and determination, even the smallest players can go on to be the most successful athletes.
As a Canadian who knows literally nothing about the Celtic FC, I learned a whole lot about this beloved team. I love that even though Robbie has lots of challenges and a long recovery he does not give up and follows his dreams. I also think it is really neat how the author was able to tie things together using an Elderly man teaching Robbie about a famous Celtic player. It is also a nice message about the positives of learning about history and culture, as well as the skills and social connections that comes with visiting seniors in your community.
The content of the story was very age appropriate for this target audience. There was some mild swearing and mention of someone being drunk, but otherwise nothing parents or teachers should be concerned about. The chapters vary in length but are broken up nicely and there are some illustrations to help readers imagine what is happening in the story; a support or strategy that is still often used by readers in this age group. I would recommend this book to children in the age 9-13 range, especially those with an interest in football, and those who have prior knowledge or a connection to Scotland. As far as the transferability to readers outside of Europe, I will note that I do think some of my younger students may struggle with some of the dialect differences in Scottish-English, for example cannae is definitely not a common phrase in North America. Older readers would probably think to stop and ask or use context cues to figure out the unfamiliar vernacular, but younger readers may be a bit lost.
One thing I didn't love about this book was about Robbie lying to his mom about playing football again. This problem of not being allowed to do something no matter how hard you try to convince your parents is a very relatable problem for children in this age group. Seeing that Robbie was able to successfully forge a letter and sneakily have his mom sign it, and then convince his coach and teachers he was allowed to play didn't sit well with me. If it was something more harmless it would be one thing, but Robbie was doing something that could have been very dangerous and lying to all of the adults around him was not a good idea, even though in the end he was safe, in other situations lying about a health condition might not turn out to be alright. I also found it concerning that when Robbie's mom found out she ended up crying tears of joy and saying how he has gotten so much better at football. If nothing else, some kind of response about how dangerous this was and he should have told her, or getting grounded or some kind of middle-grade-appropriate punishment would have at least sent the message that lying to adults is not the way to achieve what you want.
Thanks to Becky at Literally PR for sending me a copy of the book and including me in the tour!
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