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    Elle of the Ball
    Elle of the Ball
    Elle of the Ball
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Elle of the Ball

    By Elena Delle Donne

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    From 2015 WNBA MVP, 2016 Olympic gold medalist, and global ambassador to the Special Olympics Elena Delle Donne comes the first novel in a brand-new middle grade series with as much heart as there is game.

    Elle Deluca is a seventh grader who is tall—not just sort of tall. She’s six feet tall. And for a twelve-year-old girl, this means that her basketball team has high hopes for her changing positions and becoming their starting center. But a new position is not the only footwork she has to learn. Her class’s dance unit in gym is coming up, and that means she has to learn ballroom dance steps with a boy much shorter than her—and perform publically for a grade.

    In the first book in WNBA MVP and Olympic gold medalist Elena Delle Donne’s Hoops series, Elle must figure out a way to remain herself when others want her to be someone else.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
    Release dateMar 13, 2018
    ISBN9781534412330
    Elle of the Ball
    Author

    Elena Delle Donne

    Elena Delle Donne has been a professional women’s basketball player since 2013, when she was selected by the Chicago Sky second overall in the WNBA draft. She was the 2015 WNBA MVP and won the gold medal with the USA’s women’s basketball team in the 2016 Olympics. She is the global ambassador for the Special Olympics and became the first national ambassador for the Lyme Research Alliance. Elena also plays host to De11e Donne Academy, a basketball camp that runs throughout the year, where she mentors and coaches girls ages seven to eighteen. She now plays for the Washington, DC, Mystics.

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    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Elena Delle Donne's life inspires this first book in the Hoops series about Elle Deluca. If you have a reader who loves sports and is struggling to find her place in the world this book is a must-read. My son loved sports and had the opposite problem of Elle, he was small for the sport that he wanted to play, however, it didn't stop him from playing and doing well. I truly believe that what a parent teaches their child about attitude helps them to learn to deal with their struggles with a more healthy approach. In this book, Elle's parents and friends try to help her with her outlook as she struggles to adjust to her fast-growing height. I do appreciate the lessons that are taught in this book. I appreciate the fact that a middle-grade reader has fears, and hopes of what they should expect while going to 7th, 8th and 9th grade. This book helps readers to see that everyone is going through the same struggles, just not always talking about them or reacting to them where someone else can see the struggles. This book reminds me of Matt Christopher's sports series that came out starting in the 50's and decades into the 2000's when my son read some of his posthumous released books. Ms. Donne's writing is youthful, easy to read and great from your daughter or son. I think that this is a worthy book purchase.I give this book 4 stars for middle-graders and younger who like sports. I'd like to thank Simon and Schuster for allowing me to read this book via Edelweiss+ in lieu of my honest opinion.

    Book preview

    Elle of the Ball - Elena Delle Donne

    1

    My Height Is Ruining My Life!

    When you are tall for your age—not just a little tall, but extremely tall—there is one question that everybody asks you: Do you play basketball?

    People had been asking me that question ever since third grade, when I was so tall that I looked like I belonged in sixth grade. It used to annoy me. Just because I was tall, I was supposed to like basketball? And automatically be good at it? It didn’t seem fair. I was tall, so I was destined to play basketball, whether I liked it or not.

    So I guess it’s good that I actually ended up liking basketball. That’s because of my brother, Jim. He’s five years older than I am, and he’s really into sports. In our house there was always some kind of game on TV, and so I grew up watching Michael Jordan in the NBA and Sheryl Swoopes in the WNBA. We also had a basketball hoop in our driveway, so Jim taught me how to shoot, and when I got good at it we’d play against each other.

    When I was in fifth grade, I joined the basketball team at school, and I’d been playing ever since. I’d been growing ever since, too. By the summer I was twelve years old, I’d shot up to six feet tall.

    That’s right. Six feet. In seventh grade, most people are around five feet tall. That made me taller than every single kid in my grade, including the boys, and I was even taller than some of my teachers! I could barely fit in any of the desks in any classroom, so my knees were constantly banging into the bottom of my desk. And since I’d shot up a few inches in just a few months, I felt like I was in some alien body. My legs and arms just wanted to do things all on their own.

    There was only one good thing about constantly growing. It meant I had to keep buying new basketball shoes—and while I didn’t care much about fashion, I was totally obsessed with basketball shoes. My newest pair had a herringbone pattern on the outsole for extra traction, a padded heel, and a lime green stripe and laces, which perfectly matched my green and yellow basketball uniform.

    I was lacing up my new shoes in the locker room on the first day of basketball practice when my best friend, Avery, noticed them.

    Nice kicks, she said with a nod. They’re new, right?

    Yeah, I outgrew my last pair in, like, three months, I replied. Mom wasn’t too thrilled to have to buy a new pair so soon, but what could she do? I mean, it’s not my fault that I have enormous clown feet.

    Avery laughed. "You do not have clown feet. They’re in proportion to your body."

    "Well, they feel like clown feet, I said, jumping up. I keep tripping over them. Over my own feet. Have you ever done that?"

    No, Avery said. But once I tied my shoelaces together by accident and I fell flat on my face.

    I giggled. No way!

    Way, Avery replied. It was not fun.

    We both moved to the mirror, where I pulled my long blond hair back into a ponytail. Avery’s hair was normally curly, but for basketball season she wore it in tight braids that went along the side of her head and hung down her back. The summer had turned me into a tall, gangly, pale beanpole (Mom’s a sunscreen freak), but Avery had come back to school looking gorgeous, with contacts in her big brown eyes and a glowing tone to her brown skin. We looked so different that you might not believe we were best friends, but we had been since first grade, when we bonded over a mutual love of pizza and the Powerpuff Girls.

    Elle, you’re frowning, Avery said, noticing my expression in the mirror. Everything okay?

    Yeah, I’m just a little nervous, I guess, I replied.

    What’s there to be nervous about? she asked. She looked around the locker room, where the other girls on the team were getting ready. This is Spring Meadow. Everybody’s going to make the team.

    I know, I said. I’m just off my game right now.

    Are you kidding? Avery said. You’re one of the best players we’ve got. There’s nothing to worry about.

    I guess, I said, letting out an anxious breath.

    We headed out to the school gym. Spring Meadow School was a small private school in Wilmington, Delaware. It was a K–12 school with only about fifty kids in each grade. So it was pretty amazing that we had ten girls interested in being on the basketball team.

    I had been playing with most of the girls since fifth grade. Hannah Chambal and Natalie Saunders were best friends, and they were also both really nice. Caroline Lindgren was nice too, but she was one of our weaker players and spent most of her time on the bench. Bianca Hidalgo, Tiff Kalifeh, and Dina Garcia were all pretty tight with one another, and they were all good players. Patrice Ramirez was the daughter of our coach.

    The only girl I hadn’t played with yet was Amanda O’Connor. I’d heard that Coach Ramirez had convinced her to join the team this year, after Molly Porter moved away. Amanda was on the shorter side, and I didn’t think she was sporty. She came to Spring Meadow a year ago, and she joined the choir and I think the school band, too. So I was a little curious to see what kind of an athlete she was.

    We all started stretching to warm up, dressed in our practice uniforms: green shorts with a yellow stripe down the side, and green T-shirts with Nighthawks in yellow letters across the front, and a yellow bird on the back.

    Coach Ramirez came out of her office and strolled onto the gym. She coached the middle school teams for Spring Meadow. For fifth and sixth grade, we’d been coached by Coach Friedman, a sixth-grade math teacher. He was so quiet that his nickname was Coach Mouse. So I wondered what Coach Ramirez was like.

    The first thing I learned was that she was not quiet at all.

    Good afternoon, Nighthawks! Coach Ramirez said loudly. Line up for me, please, two rows, five and five!

    We scrambled onto the gym floor. She had that kind of voice that made you hustle when she told you to do something. I ended up in the last row with Avery on my right and Amanda on my left.

    Give me ten squats! Coach Ramirez ordered.

    I dropped and started the warm-up. It felt good to be moving, and I could feel my nerves dropping away. We followed the squats with some old-school push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks.

    I glanced over at Amanda to see how she was doing. She had her reddish-brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and her freckled cheeks were turning pink, but she was keeping up with everyone else.

    Nice job! Coach called out when we finished our last jumping jack. "Welcome to the first day of practice. Today we’re going to do some drills so I can

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