Nine-year-old Venus Macguire is ready to trade smiling for the camera for nailing a soccer ball into the net. Her mother isn’t thrilled. She’s been grooming Venus for supermodel status since her daughter was three. Everyone at school knows about Venus’s famous commercials, and some of the girls on the soccer squad don’t think she’s cut out for athletic competition. Thing is, Venus is a soccer natural. When she’s scheduled to be the Cinderella doll at a toy store grand opening, the would-be soccer star has to show everyone, even herself, that her real goal is not to be special—it’s just to be the real Venus: a kid with a kick!

Reviews:

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-Venus wants to quit modeling and play soccer like a normal nine-year-old, but when she joins a team, her mother is less than enthusiastic. Finally, the girl resorts to drastic measures; she chops off her beautiful curls to get out of dressing up like a Cinderella doll for a toy-store opening, an event that conflicts with the Comets' first game. Tamar fills her tale with over-the-top exaggerations, yet the humor falls short. Venus's mother is a stock character, a former Miss Texas Oil Well with a rhinestone oil well tiara in her memory bank. She lavishes all her attention on her only child, hoping that her daughter will have a future consisting of more than a bookkeeping job. Venus is teased and treated rudely by many of her teammates either because they are jealous or because she shows up to practice dressed in white shorts trimmed with gold ribbon. Ultimately she does make a friend who has the same competitive spirit toward soccer as Venus had previously when auditioning for her modeling jobs. However, readers never develop sympathy for any of the characters,

Kirkus Reviews

Venus Maguire, aging child model, longs for something more. Her commercials for diapers and baby products still air on television, but at age nine, she’s getting a little too old for these roles. Her stage mother has indulged her tantrums and pouting over the years, because she wants her daughter to be even more famous than she was as Miss Texas Oil pageant. Now she really doesn’t want Venus to spoil her looks while playing soccer. Chock full of cardboard caricatures: Venus with her sparkly crown and advanced knowledge of make up, the striving mother, and the jealous trio of mean girls who thwart Venus as she tries her feet at soccer, this has little to recommend it. While there is a dearth of good sports books for young girls, this effort, with predictable plot--was there any question that Venus would find herself and new friends on the field?--and choppy writing, misses the goal. (Fiction. 7-9)

The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The format is inviting and accessible for reluctant or just new readers: short chapters, large print, and generous spacing….Disgruntled mama’s darlings will take heart in [Venus’s] rebellion and in the realization that when you come down off your pedestal, you just might land in the midst of some really nice people.

ForeWord, Mid-winter, 2004

“Venus’s white T-shirt had ‘Starlet’ stitched on it with gold thread. Her white shorts were trimmed with gold ribbon. Her anklets had matching lacy gold edges. Jill S. saw her first. ‘Oh, look. It’s Soccer Barbie.’”

Nine-year-old Venus is determined to be a soccer star, but her single mother is determined that her only child be “the Supermodel of 2013.” Venus is tired of curling irons, ruffled party dresses, and keeping her smile wide so her dimples would show. She wants to be a part of the Comets soccer team and have friends, rather than spend weekends modeling to please adults. When her first soccer match is scheduled on the same day as she is slated to play Cinderella at a toy store grand opening, Venus takes drastic measures to prove to her mother how important it is for her to be with her team.

The author, who was born in Austria but raised in New York City, is well known in the world of books for children and young adults. Originally a screenwriter for television, she has written twenty books for children and teens, revealing a deep understanding of youths’ concerns. Her novel Junkyard Dog received a starred review from Publishers Weekly; other titles have been chosen as American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults and the International Reading Association Young Adults’ Choices.

Plenty of realistic preteen dialogue makes her latest volume appealing to girls who are beginning to read chapter books, or to reluctant young female readers. The characters, while somewhat undeveloped individually, portray typical types of upper elementary aged girls—the athletic, the timid, the klutzy, the snobbish. Young readers will identify with Venus’s need to be one of the group and a confident team player. “I want to be a regular kid for now. I mean, a real one,” she says. Written for ages seven to nine, this realistic novel will receive high-fives from its readers.