Slam Dunk! (Silly Billy series) by Vibha Batra (author) and Aindri C (Illustrator)
My take on the book:
Best friends Faiza and Kalpesh trained in basketball under Coach Dollar at the Sporty sports academy. When Coach got a new sign board for the academy with an intention to make it popular as the latest selfie point in town, Kalpesh accidentally damaged the sign board. The grand launch event ended up being a failure, courtesy Kalpesh’s freak mistake and later though he confesses to it but the Coach is still mad at him.
Since multiple apologies did not work, Faiza and Kalpesh are determined to mellow down Coach — they offer gifts, handmade fudge, organic gum massage oil, handmade sweater — every gift unintentionally made the best friends bigger villains in front of the Coach. When their daily training slot is replaced by the Coach, Faiza must act fast to continue using the academy in their preferred timeslot. What extreme steps Faiza and Kalpesh take to amend their mistakes, forms the rest of the story.
This is the story of two eight -year-old kids Faiza and Kalpesh who are passionate about learning and playing basketball but a series of mistakes land them in a tricky situation with their coach. The initial attempts to apologize to the coach, in what Kalpesh calls Pappa-sorry, are hilarious. Once they fail in these attempts, the next steps by Faiza are interesting, as they show the resilience and determination kids possess and how far they go for their love of the sport.
The story also subtly points out the ego of coaches and how few of them tend to ruin careers of bright players. While the first half is hilarious and fresh, the second half gets predictable especially towards the end. The illustrations are cute and capture the essence of the story. If you have kids who love basketball, then this book will be the best gift for them. If you always wanted your kids to develop interest for sports, then look further and immediately get a copy, and they are sure to nag for getting into a coaching class.
My rating:
4/5.