Love Double Dutch!

Gr 5–8—MaKayla is a girl from Brooklyn with only one thing on her mind: taking her Double Dutch team to the National Jump-Off at Madison Square Garden. That is, until her parents send her and her brother to stay with relatives in South Carolina so they can work on their relationship. MaKayla wonders how she'll survive the summer without Double Dutch and under the wrath of her cousin, Sally, who dumped the jump-roping game for ballet. But when MaKayla's aunt signs the girls up for a sports camp, MaKayla discovers not only that Double Dutch is huge in the South, but that she now has a chance to make it to Madison Square Garden after all—if she can convince Sally to jump again despite the bullying that made her quit, and put together an award-winning team and routine in time. With a clear tie to one of Spicer-Dannelly's previous projects, the Disney Channel movie Jump In!, this title offers a similar wish-fulfillment story line. While some of life's realities are addressed in the plot (such as race, socioeconomic status, junior high crushes, bullies, and more), readers may find MaKayla's almost grown-up perspective on most of them unrealistic and slightly didactic, especially when the narrative reads younger than her rising eighth grade age. A few insensitive assertions that "Fighting is for savages"—make this title difficult to place in a collection.