Yasmin the soccer star by Saadia Faruqi, illustrated by Hatem Aly

A few years ago, (years? Where does the time go?) I read the first Yasmin book. I'm too unmotivated to go back and find the link, but I remember that it didn't really click for me and I didn't think it was a good fit for my audience. Capstone sent me a sample of a later book in the series though, and I find myself liking this one much more.

Yasmin, a Pakistani-American girl, is all set for her first soccer game. But is she? Coach Garcia in gym class is introducing the game of soccer and Yasmin has some worries. She's watched soccer on tv and it's so rough! What if she gets hurt? With the support of her coach and team however, she finds out that the game is a lot of fun and she can be safe, even when she's the goalie.

Aly's cartoons show a brown-skinned young girl with huge eyes. Her coach is an Hispanic female, her principal is a male Asian, and her classmates show a variety of skin tones and body types. Most of the art shows Yasmin working with her coach to get over her fears and learn to play the game. This does lead to a little confusion, for me at least, since it makes it look almost like a one-on-one lesson. The class depicted seems very small to start with (8 students) and I felt that was a little unrealistic. However, from the first book, Yasmin seems to be from a fairly wealthy family, so it's not unlikely that she's at a private school.

There are several pages of back matter, including cultural notes, a glossary of Urdu terms, and profiles of the authors. These are available in individual easy reader format, paperback or library bound, and also in chapter book format, with several stories bound together. I have a similar series, Sofia Martinez by Jacqueline Jules, in my beginning chapter series. Like Sofia, Yasmin is at the upper end of easy readers, with a general lexile around 500. The text is bold and simple and the chapter short, especially if you get one of the individual titles, but readers could easily consider this a chapter book. It's about the same level as a Frog and Toad title for example.

Verdict: The diverse characters and sport theme are nice, but this overall isn't a series I see a lot of audience for in my library. I think it could be very popular in other areas though.

ISBN: 9781515846420; Published 2020 by Picture Window/Capstone; Review copy provided by the publisher