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Friday, September 20, 2024

Guy Friday- Team Park

Ahn, Angela. Team Park 
September 10, 2024 by Tundra Books 
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

It's summer, and Evan wants to be enjoying his days, but he's not sure what to do. He's just been released from physiotherapy, but doesn't want to go back to soccer, even though his father puts pressure on him to be a top notch player. Darren, his therapist, often participates in dominator ninja competitions, and this sounds interesting to Leo. His older sister, Lydia, and his toddler sister, Georgia, are also hanging around the house. Their mother has bought a trampoline, but there father disapproves of the expense and the danger, posting a ton of rules that the kids have to follow. Since Evan's friends are all off on their own adventures, he starts looking into ninja competitions, and finds out there is one with tryouts in Seattle, not far from his Vancouver home. He starts to train on jungle gyms in nearby parks, and starts to build an obstacle course in his back yard. No matter what he does, however, his father treats him like a failure. When he sprains his wrist again, his chances at competing disappears until he discovers the Soiled Pants Team Edition, a mud based obstacle course. Soon, he has roped his entire family into training. There are group runs, and even Georgia pulls her own weight at events that involve crawling. The family builds a mud pit in the yard (after some construction difficulties), and even practices scaling walls. They have goals for each member, and a training plan. Everyone is nervous the day of the competition, and this isn't improved when the organizers announce that there have been changes made to the different events. Will Team Park be able to hold their own? Will Evan finally show his father that he, too, can compete? And at the end of the competition, who will do the muddy laundry?
Strengths: This was appealing on several different levels; some young readers will be wanting to create mud pits in their own back yard and hoisting siblings over fences, while others will be intrigued with Evan's troublesome relationship with his demanding father. While his father frequently throws hostile glances Evan's way, he is not quite abusive, and I think that there are a lot of families where this dynamic plays out. Even more interestingly, while the family is of Korean descent, the father's behavior is not explained in terms of this background, giving this more universal appeal. Lydia ended up having quite the knack for the ninja style sport, and even Georgia gives it a go. I loved that Evan is called upon to babysit his younger sister, who frequently asks for him. While it isn't his favorite thing to do, he plays with her without complaining about it. There are plenty of details about mud, trampolines, and other ninja activities, and as a bonus, Darren gives Evan passes to the new, expensive training gym where he will be working. 
Weaknesses: The parents have a few fights over money, with the father even throwing out "I'm the breadwinner". I don't think that the mother has a job outside the home, and I would have loved to see that explored a little more. Middle grade fiction isn't really the place for that, and young readers will be much more interested in the shenanigans in the mud, but my interest was piqued. 
What I really think: Hapka's  The Competition Begins (Junior Ninja Champion #1) had some similar themes, but had a lot more characters to keep track of. Like Ahn's Swimming Into Trouble, this focused nicely on one tween and the interactions with the family that surrounded his activities. This is a quick, humorous book with plenty of emotional meat to the story. I see myself handing this to a lot of students when they need to do book projects, and know that when they present on this title, their classmates will all come to the library and want to check it out! 

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