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Reviews and random thoughts on children's and teen fiction.
1. Old School Sunday: There's a Girl in my Hammerlock by Jerry Spinelli (1991)

There's a Girl in my Hammerlock. by Jerry Spinelli. 1991. Simon & Schuster. 199 pages. ISBN: 9780671746841

When Maisie Potter doesn’t make the cheerleading squad, she decides to try something completely different, and tries out for the wrestling team. Though no one tries to stop her from trying out, Maisie is the first girl in her school’s history to join an all-male sport. When she makes the team, suddenly the other members are awkward around her, and boys from other school forfeit their matches rather than wrestle against a girl! It is only through the support of her parents and her fair-minded coach that Maisie makes it through the season and proves that great wrestlers can be boys or girls.

Co-ed sports are much more common these days than they were when I first read this book as a middle schooler. Back then, I can remember that many gym classes were still divided by gender, and that when the boys worked on a wrestling unit, the girls practiced either Tae Bo or self-defense. I was not at all a sporty kid, but I liked Jerry Spinelli, so I’m sure my decision to read the book had to do with his name on the cover more than anything else. Still, Maisie is such an irresistible character, it is no surprise to me that I grew so attached to her that I bought a paperback copy of this book and carried it around in my backpack for months. I also remember really liking that Maisie had a preschool little sister - and it drove me nuts that I never knew what P.K. stood for.

Though there is a fair amount of romance in this book, and a lot of catty gossip about a popular girl named Liz Lampley, both of which might appeal exclusively to girls, the sports material makes it equally appealing to male and female readers. Though much of the story focuses on how Maisie is treated because she is a girl, there is also a lot about team building, trying one’s best, and competing to win. Though some of the gender issues might seem odd to today’s kids, who might very well have female classmates who do wrestle, the politics of middle school, and the excitement of performing well at a sporting event, will ring true for kids now as they did for me in the early 1990s.

Old-School read-alikes for There’s Girl in My Hammerlock include There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom by Louis Sachar and Nothing But the Truth by Avi. Newer read-alikes about sporty girls include American Girl’s McKenna books, the Go for Gold Gymnast series, and the Dairy Queen books by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

I  borrowed There's a Girl in My Hammerlock from my local public library. 

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat.

2 Comments on Old School Sunday: There's a Girl in my Hammerlock by Jerry Spinelli (1991), last added: 9/6/2013
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