Mid-Week Reads...Throwing Like a Girl

Ever been told you play like a girl? Usually it serves as an insult unless you are a girl and play ball like a real girl who holds her own just fine on a field...maybe even better than the rest.

Throwing Like A Girl by Weezie Kerr Mackey follows the story a girl who moves from Chicago to Dallas and realizes there is more to Texas than cowboys. There is softball, new softball friends, a bedroom to herself, and a marriage project in her behavioral science class...she is lucky enough to be paired up with a really cute senior.

But like any ball game, life has its UPS and DOWNS. I love this about the book. Ella's got days when she's soaring on a softball high and days when she cries in her pillow from stress, from missing Chicago, from mean girls, from not knowing what to make of the very nice and very popular Nate. Ella is a good girl with a good head on her shoulders...she acts very mature for a 15 year old and manages to have a successful new year at a new school.

I also love how the book is divided into preseason, regular season, and championship and that the author is a sports girl herself. She even grew up in Chicago and coached in Dallas.

Best line:

Losing sucks.


Can't say it any better. And the best feeling has to be winning...

Summary:

No one asks Ella how she feels about moving halfway across the country in the middle of her sophomore year. But she ends up in Texas anyway, without plans for the weekend or friends to guide her through the campus of her new private school. So she decides to try out for the softball team—and she makes it! Now if only she knew how to throw, hit, and field the ball.

Ella wants to throw like a girl—a real girl.

This is the part you can’t read in a book. You just have to do it.

Ella has a lot to learn—on and off the field. Softball changes Ella’s life, for better and for worse. She discovers a confidence she never knew she had and makes new friends—and enemies. When Ella falls for her snotty teammate’s gorgeous brother, suddenly she isn’t just fielding balls, she’s also dodging evil glares from girls in class and on the team.

When life throws you a curve ball—learn how to hit it!

I love being on this bus with all these girls who play sports, even if Sally Fontineau, who

wants to ruin my life, is half a bus in front of me. It’s not like every girl is my best friend.

It’s just a thing I feel a part of. It makes everything different. -Ella

If Ella’s going to survive this year, she’ll have to set some ground rules and learn to stand up for herself—in the game and in her life.