Dulcie Dando, Soccer Star

Book Review

Dulcie Dando, Soccer Star

Stops, Sue. Dulcie Dando, Soccer Star. New York: Henry Holth & Co (J), 1992.

Sue Stops is a teacher and language coordinator in England. She created Dulcie Dando, her second picture book, because she wanted to have a story that showed a young girl, the age of her students, as her own hero. The book begins by showing the “long line of daring women” in Dulcie Dando’s family. From the very beginning, the reader is presented with women, some of whom are great-grandmothers, having daring and untraditional hobbies. However, these women are not the role models that the book presents, necessarily. Instead, Dulcie Dando becomes her own hero, and the hero that is taken away from the story. She has these extraordinary women to look up to, but still decides she wants to be different. She is a very talented soccer player, and wants to be a part of the team. The boys on the team are so unhappy about letting a girl play, that the coach makes Dulcie a back up player. However, because of her self-determination, Dulcie comes to the game with soccer shoes just incase.

When a uniform mishap leaves the team short one player, Dulcie steps up. Playing beautifully, Dulcie barely notices when the button on her shorts breaks and she is left in her underclothes. Instead of getting embarrassed and letting the incident ruin her chance of proving herself, Dulcie continues on to score the winning goal. Here, the author presents the reader with a young girl who will not let anything get in the way of her dream. She is determined and not afraid to stand up for herself, making her quite a powerful female hero.

The illustrations in this book show Dulcie’s emotions as she goes from being angry about the unfairness of the team, to being proud of herself for overcoming an obstacle. What is even more interesting, though, is the fact that the illustrations completely reverse female stereotypes. At one point, Dulcie’s mother is shown fixing a car, while her father is ironing shirts. This, being merely in the background, is a perfect example of how pictures and text work together to reverse stereotypes as well as promote female strength and heroes.