The book that I chose to read (or the book Tara told me I had to read) is called the Mighty Dynamo by Kieran Crowley. Noah is the main character of this book. The setting is Ireland in the present day. The Mighty Dynamo is what Noah’s mom used to call him before she passed away. Noah gets into a fight at one of his soccer games, a fight that he did not start. As a result, he gets kicked off of the school’s team, Saint Killian’s.  When Noah gets banned from Saint Kilian’s soccer, he sets his eyes on building his own team under the name of another school.  Noah has a genius friend named Stevie who was the one to come up with the idea of starting Noah’s own team. The idea is to start a new team for the all girls school St. Mary’s.

Noah is not pleased that he is playing for a girls school but he knows this is the only way he can play in the big tournament. The St. Mary’s principal lets Noah’s play under her school’s name but she says they must have at least one girl on their team. Noah is not pleased with this either but again he knows that this is the only way he can play. The girl on the team is Maggie O’Connell. Noah met Maggie at the park to see if she was any good at soccer. He found out that she was really really good, so he started to appreciate her. The first thing Maggie did when she saw Noah was pull out a tennis ball and they had a Juggle off which is when you try to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible. The Juggle Off was so hard because it was with a tennis ball not a soccer ball. Maggie wanted the Juggle Off as a way to test Noah’s skills.

Noah is unstoppable, athletic, and stubborn. Noah is unstoppable because when he got banned from the soccer team he didn’t give up. He still wanted to play in the big tournament so he made his own team.  Noah is athletic because he is the best player on his soccer team. He is also the leader of his soccer team and he is the captain because he is the leader. Noah is stubborn because once Stevie presented the plan of starting a new team under the name of the a all girls school, he didn’t want to do it at all. It took a lot of Stevie arguing with him before he agreed.

Noah was eventually into the idea of starting this new team because he wants to play in the big Tournament, the World Cup. When Noah’s team realizes that the first manager/coach doesn’t work out he hires Stevie to be the manager/coach. This is the most interesting part because Stevie is not that good at soccer but he is a great coach. Stevie was happy from then on out, but when Noah wasn’t looking he always had this look in his eyes that he wanted to be a player. I think the quote I chose resembles Noah’s leadership, “Come on team we can do it. We have to get better.” This quote shows Noah’s leadership because he is saying encouraging words to the players.

I loved this book so much because it was a step outside my comfort zone, that’s big for me. Tara told me that I needed to take a look at fiction, not only nonfiction and I listened to her. Now I’m reading so many fiction books that sometimes I have to read a little nonfiction. I would recommend this book if you like realistic sports fiction. This book takes a lot of surprising twists and turns, but it is still very realistic. Things happen that could totally happen today. This book reminds me of a typical sports story, it isn’t unique. There are a lot of parts of this book that remind me of Matt Christopher and Tim Green books. If you don’t know, those two are some very famous sports writers. I would give this book four stars because I really liked it.  I would have liked an epilogue so I could find out if Noah ended up playing in the Premier League when he grew up.