Wonder Goal!

With the Cup being played this year, Americans will once again renew their tenuous relationship with soccer. For some kids and adults, however, soccer is an enduring love, and they're just as enthusiastic--if not as rich in tradition, as their soccer-loving counterparts in other countries. Michael's Foreman's imaginative (both literally and figuratively) text and witty illustrations convey how children everywhere dream of attaining big goals (pun intended). Foreman opens with a scene of a gigantic, dream-like soccer field, with hundreds playing on what looks like several square miles of turf. Our unnamed hero suffers a small practical joke from his teammates, but his on-field heroics quiet them until... he wakes up. Or does he? It becomes somewhat confusing at this point, as Foreman overreaches in his blend of the past and the future, the longings of the boy and his father. The scenes seem to switch from dream to--perhaps the boy grown up?-- playing in a stadium in front of tens of thousands of international soccer fans. The story uses the cliche of the father too busy to see his son's big goal, except we are told that "his dad usually came to all the games." That doesn't seem so bad, but, after the boy shoots "the first goal of the Final" (either in his dream, or later as an adult, or with his real team in the present--I'm not sure), we're told, "And this time--this [italics added] this time, his dad was there to see it. After he scores that tremendous goal ("The vast crowd erupted. He had hit another wonder goal!")in the huge stadium, we get an equally confusing statement: "Just like the goal he had scored all those years before on that freezing boyhood Sunday." This must refer to the "cold" day that opens the book; however, that soccer game is interrupted by a dream, or (more probably) an image of his father when he was a boy, and his father's similar soccer hopes and dreams. OK, so maybe it doesn't matter that the text is somewhat confusing. Perhaps some would argue that the author masterfully switches point of view and timeframe. I think, however, that the cinematic shifts in time and narrator will confuse much of the book's intended audience. I like the range of emotions here, the context, the wit and intelligence, and the vivid, imaginative pictures, but a slightly simpler book may have been more effective.