Fifth-graders Kenzie (aka Kenzilla) and Shelly (aka Bomb Shell) are best friends and want to be roller derby stars, following in the footsteps (or wheeltracks?) of Kenzie’s mom. They can’t wait till they turn 15 and can join the Austin, Texas, city league. When the city introduces a new junior league for girls their age, they celebrate—only to realize that if they want to ensure they’ll be on the same team, they need to try out as part of a team of five.
This leads them on a quest to find three other girls who can skate and have the temperament for roller derby. But what happens when Shelly starts acting like close friends with one of the other girls, when she was supposed to be Kenzie’s best friend? And can Kenzie relax enough around her secret crush, cool skateboarder Bree, to give her a chance on the team, too?
Also, Kenzie’s dad is a trans man, and while this isn’t a focal point, we see that Kenzie is aware that some of the stories about his younger days involve times when people thought he was a girl. “In his ‘before’ stories, Kenzie’s dad was like an undercover agent, with a secret only he knew. Kenzie wondered what it would be like to have a secret that big,” the book tells us. Later, after Kenzie starts to realize her crush on Bree, we read, “‘I don’t have a crush on anyone,’ Kenzie said, swallowing her secret inside her. She was beginning to understand a little bit better how her dad felt in his ‘before’ stories.” While of course LGBTQ parents don’t “make” our kids LGBTQ, I love this parallel and the implication that older LGBTQ people’s experiences may help younger ones better understand what they may be going through. (Having said that, we shouldn’t assume that coming out as trans and coming out as LGB are exactly the same; I don’t think this book is doing that, but I offer this as a general comment. I also recognize my own limited perspective as a cisgender reviewer.)
Themes of friendship and the awkward social navigation of the tween years are lightly woven into this fun novel, with expressive illustrations on many pages (though this is an early middle-grade read, not a picture book). The girls also represent a range of racial identities: Kenzie, Shelly, and Jules are White; Bree is Black; Tomoko is Asian, and Camila is Latina.
A promising start to a new series.
