In 2005, an army veteran won $1 million by throwing a football through a target during a halftime show at a college football game. Lupica (The Big Field
) inserts a 13-year-old in the contestant role and moves the action to Massachusetts, where QB Nate Brodie stars for his eighth-grade team and idolizes the New England Patriots' Tom Brady. The pressure to win is intense—Nate's father has lost his job, the house is close to foreclosure, and his best friend, Abby, needs money to go to a special school since she is rapidly going blind. Though the entire cast is a bit too perfect, many kids will relate to Nate's fears about his family's finances: “You were going along, having what felt like a pretty cool life, and then all of a sudden came the economy
trying to wreck everything.” The ups and downs of Nate's peewee football team provide sports play-by-play, but the thread that will pull readers through is whether Nate can save his and Abby's families with one well-aimed spiral on Thanksgiving night. Ages 10–up. (Nov.)
