King of the bench: Kicking and screaming by Steve Moore

This is a notebook novel, one of the countless spawned by the mighty machine of Wimpy Kid. This one has a sports focus - the main character is also purportedly the author. Steve is your average kid - he likes sports and has pretty good hand to eye coordination, but his feet - not so coordinated. Which is bad when soccer is the THE most popular sport in the world and he hates it. A fact which he inadvertently mentions to his friends, short and psychic Joey, enigmatic and weird Carlos, and Becky with the perfect smile.

Becky who also loves soccer.

Becky who now isn't speaking to him.

So, Steve braves bullies, humiliation, and signs up for the JV soccer team, just to prove to Becky that he's willing to learn about her beloved game. Then he finds himself on a bus to a soccer tournament, sprayed by a skunk, meeting the craziest best soccer player in the world, and, just maybe, learning to actually... like soccer?

The book is illustrated throughout with scratchy black and white cartoons which reminded me a little of Gary Larson or Stephen Pastis' style (Pastis blurbed the book). It has the requisite bodily humor jokes, weird best friends, and (sort of) triumph of the underdog. At least Becky is talking to him again (or will be, after he stops smelling of skunk).

There's a fair amount of soccer talk in here - sports aren't a huge deal around here, not as much as, say, football in Texas, but I do get a lot of requests for soccer players, mostly from the Hispanic kids who are more familiar with the Brazilian and other teams. There's also the deprecatory tone of many of these notebook novels, where the kid kind of realizes he's on the outside and/or sometimes being a jerk, but just keeps going anyways. There is some diversity, but all secondary characters (Becky is a great soccer player, the celebrity player is from South America). While I personally didn't find it particularly funny, as I often tell kids humor is subjective!

Verdict: While I have a lot of Wimpy Kid, Big Nate, and Dork Diaries fans, my library kids won't necessarily pick up any book that's a notebook novel. They've largely turned up their noses at Timmy Failure, Classroom, Charlie Joe Jackson, and only some kids are Patterson fans. If you have diehard notebook novel fans or sports fiction enthusiasts, this would be a fun addition to the collection.

ISBN: 9780062203342; Published March 2018 by HarperCollins; Borrowed from another library in my consortium