i Love booth books. It keeps u on ur toes and it is very fast moving. But it seens like brain is a antaganist but hes her bf? ( )

Reviewed by Randstostipher "tallnlankyrn" Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com

When we last left D.J. Schwenk in DAIRY QUEEN, she was trying to cope with her family's problems, the inclusion of Brian into her life, and surviving being on the Red Bend football team. You know, when most people thought girls shouldn't be on the team.

At first it seemed like she had found solutions to all of those problems. But all good things must come to an end, whether D.J. likes it or not.

With Brian being her sort of boyfriend, D.J. is pretty ecstatic, since not only is he hot and athletic, he is her first real boyfriend. But it sort of creates a problem since D.J. isn't so sure where there relationship is heading or if it is going at all. Brian isn't too sure, either, since it seems like D.J. would rather spend time with her family then hang out with him.

Her friend, Amber, is starting to get noticed, for all the wrong reasons, though. Now known as the girl with a girlfriend, Amber is beginning to change, once again, right in front of D.J.'s eyes, all because people in their town don't approve of that kind of relationship.

D.J.'s family is beginning to resolve their relationship problems. But when they think all is well, their financial problems come into play. Not only that, but D.J. herself and her brother, Win, suffer injuries that just might put an end to what they love the most.

While trying to control all of her problems, D.J. must be able to find her strength, the one that got her through her summer and the one that helped her get on the football team.

Once again, D.J. shines as a heroine who shows that everyone has the ability to get over any obstacle thrown their way. ( )

This book was a vrey good book. It was about a high school girl that plays football on her high school football team. It is about the problems that she must face as she enters her junior year in high school. She lives on a dairy farm and deals with family problems, school problems and problems with friends and her boyfriend. She deals with all of these problems as she helps take care of her brother who gets paralyzed in a college football game. Recommend this book to all young adults.

The year is good. D. J.'s friendship with Amber is great, and with Amber's girlfriend Dale. And Brian is her boyfriend, kind of. Brian is awesome when they are alone or at the farm, but out in public, he get a "What is the world is SHE doing here?" look. Why? D.J. has a lot of time to figure it out when her brother Win gets a spinal cord injury from football and she stays at the hospital with him.
I so loved The Off Season! I thought it was a lot better than Dairy Queen, probably just because I liked the story line better. I definately recommed this book to anyone! ( )

This was a little different from the first book but I still loved it. Different because DJ spends a lot of time with her brother in the hospital. She still has plenty of deep thoughts and shows her strength throughout the book. I definately think that her family would be lost without her.
I could understand her taking over the farm work in the first book more than I could understand her being the sole person at the hospital with Win. I understand that her mother was in no shape, but I thought her dad gave in too easily.
Loved the book and can't wait for the third one. I want to see if Brian ever gets a backbone and if DJ finally gets to have some fun. ( )

I was delighted to be back with DJ again, she is as wonderful as ever. This sequel was full of disaster, but through it all DJ was true to herself, and her observations filled with honesty and hilarity, no matter how dire the circumstances. Again a great sports story, a great relationship story, a great family story. I'd give this to anyone I catch standing still. Oh, and this cover is so much better than the cow on the first one! ( )

I read and reviewed the previous book in this series, Dairy Queen, not long ago, and I wasn't a wholehearted fan. However, enough people recommended that I continue with the series that I took their advice. I am SO happy I did, because I absolutely loved The Off Season!

DJ, with her down-home, farmgirl sensibilities, is delightful. Even though I was never a big sports girl, I love that DJ is strong and athletic and that she's proud of it. DJ feels like a real person, and she has this deadpan way of speaking that cracks me up. A favorite quote (just so you'll get it, Doing Something Stupid is what gets you pregnant): "...and while I hadn't Done Anything Stupid, I wasn't sure where exactly I stood on the whole subject. I mean, it's not that I wanted to do anything Really Stupid, but I wouldn't be so against doing something Kind of Stupid- something A Little Silly, maybe."

I felt like The Off Season had a lot more substance to it than Dairy Queen. This is due largely to an accident that befalls one of DJ's family members. As the family starts to deal with the changes that have befallen them, they all start to grow up a little, and actually deal with what's happening, even if they can't talk to each other. It's a Schwenk thing. This story really dealt with a lot, while still being light-hearted overall and maintaining a PG rating.

So, good characters, strong writing, entertaining plot.... definitely recommended. ( )

D.J. is back at it again in the sequel to Dairy Queen, The Off Season. Things are finally on the upside for D.J. She is friends again with Amber and even Amber’s girlfriend Dale, and she is still sort of dating cutie quarterback Brian Nelson. She couldn’t be more happier than playing football for Red Bend and the guys actually accept her as part of the team.But as we know, D.J.’s life has been anything but easy. She injures her shoulder during practice and has to decide between continuing playing football and possibly sustaining her shoulder injury, which would keep her from playing basketball. A basketball scholarship is D.J.’s ticket out of Red Bend. Then things with Brian start to go downhill, he seems fine when they are alone, but he never wants to be with her in public. To top that all off, Win is injured and D.J. flies across the country to take care of him for her parents.I almost thought it was to much for D.J. to handle, I know it would be more than enough for me. Ultimately D.J. prevails like I knew she would. Of all the books I’ve read, D.J. is one of the few characters I’ve found myself truly admiring. The Off Season was more than I expected and I sincerely hope this isn’t the last of Miss D.J. Schwenk. (Even though I haven’t seen anything official on catherinemurdock.com there is a book cover with Dairy Queen III??? on it, I know I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed!) ( )

Richie's Picks: THE OFF SEASON by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Houghton Mifflin, June 2007, ISBN: 0-618-68695-9

"And I called my farm 'muscle in my arm'
But the land was sweet and good and I did what I could"
-- Traditional, "When I First Came to this Land"

If you have yet to read DAIRY QUEEN -- a Richie's Picks Best of 2006 title, and the book for which this is the sequel -- then you might hold off reading this review and, instead, go read DAIRY QUEEN first.

"All of a sudden he blurted out, 'You ever date a football player?'
"I thought for a minute about going to the movies with Troy Lundstrom. 'Not really.'
" 'Me neither,' he said, looking off over the trees." -- from DAIRY QUEEN

THE OFF SEASON picks up right where DAIRY QUEEN ends, with both the new school year and the official high school football season beginning while, at the same time, the relationship between DJ (Darlene Joyce) Schwenk and Brian Nelson is seriously revving up. For many readers, the humor and complexities in the evolving relationship between these two football players from rival high schools will serve quite well by itself in making this a great read.

Readers will also become thoroughly caught up in the thought-provoking and well-researched aspects of the book that deal with the grave, life-altering risks and consequences involved when twenty-two large, fast, and well-practiced players repeatedly smash into each other on the field of play:

"Everyone else stood up, getting off the ground in that way you do when you've hit the grass a million times in your life and you know you'll hit it a million more. I wanted to stand up too, stand like you always do. Because if you don't, it means that you're either really wimpy or really hurt, and who would want to be either one of those? But I couldn't."

But apart from the romance and the violence, the aspect of THE OFF SEASON upon which I've been reflecting involves the Schwenk farm serving as a model of so many of today's family farms across America -- at least, the ones that are still remaining in the face of new housing developments and the consolidation of family farms into the agribusinesses about which Eric Schlosser speaks in CHEW ON THIS http://www.richiespicks.com/users/sto...

"I might as well just quit high school right now and work for Dad, slaving away for eighteen hours a day while we lost even more money and after a century of backbreaking work had to sell to some developer who'd turn our beautiful soil into driveways and basements, and our cows into dinner."

"Scarecrow on a wooden cross, blackbird in the barn
Four hundred empty acres that used to be my farm
I grew up like my daddy did, my grandpa cleared this land
When I was five I walked the fence while grandpa held my hand
-- John Mellencamp "Rain on the Scarecrow"

I was a little kid on Long Island, far enough back in time that I can remember when there was still a dairy farm on Manetta Hill Road in Plainview (back when the Long Island Expressway only extended east to South Oyster Bay Road). When we moved east from Plainview to East Northport, there was still a dairy over on Jericho Turnpike in Elwood, and I'd walk along the periphery of hundreds of acres of potatoes and pumpkins each morning after they opened Grace Hubbs School in 1964. Meanwhile, Shari grew up out here, down in Silicon Valley when it was still full of apricot and plum orchards. Now that is all long gone, too.

In the upcoming Richard Peck book, ON THE WINGS OF HEROES, there is a very funny scene involving the young main character, his best friend, and an old car they find which had been manufactured locally by a company that only built a hundred or so of them before falling victim to the economies of scale that the larger manufacturers were already achieving back in the 1930s. We've all seen the disappearing family grocery stores, bookstores, stationary stores, hardware stores, and coffee shops. An old goatfarming friend of mine was complaining the other day because there is no longer a corner barbershop to go sit in and chat while waiting your turn, and so now he is required to make an appointment to go get a haircut in a corporate-owned salon.

There is a romanticism concerning family farms that remains alive in America. Kids are still growing up with CHARLOTTE'S WEB and Old McDonald's Farm just as we Baby Boomers did. But from back in the days that my grandfather was learning to read until the recent time when our current middle school students were learning to read, the farming population in America has dwindled from 32 million people to under 5 million. Does that romanticism mean that family farms are something to be supported and preserved in a way that has not been done for other businesses? A 1998 USDA study http://http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea... found that federal policies over the past couple of decades have actually favored agribusinesses over the family farms.

THE OFF SEASON will have many readers thinking about whether something should be done to help preserve this way of life. As with DAIRY QUEEN, it will certainly erase many a romantic notion about farming for some readers, and will undoubtedly ignite some notions of becoming a farmer for others.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

D.J's life is starting to be a little bit brighter. Her and Brian are dating, her best friend is speaking to her again, and overall, life is working out. For a few days anyways. Suddenly, everything goes downhill. D.J. hurts her shoulder and has to decide between playing high school football, or basketball, which would give her a chance for a scholarship, Her family starts worrying about money, best friend Amber and her girlfriend Dale decide to move away, and her little brother is going off with his girlfriend. However, it gets even worse when her brother, Will, is injured badly in a football accident and ends up in the hospital. Will D.J.'s life start looking up again? Will Will's injury get better? Or will her life keep getting a little bit darker day by day?

"The Off Season" is the exciting sequel to Catherine Gilberts "Dairy Queen." I love how realistic D.J. is and how her character is so easy to relate to. Like "Dairy Queen", the book keeps you on your toes with exciting twists and turns that are unexpected. The way the story is written makes the reader feel like she really knows D.J. Overall, "The Off Season" was a great, light, novel that, like "Dairy Queen", would make a great summer read!

D.J. Schwenk is a junior in high school in rural Red Bend, Wisconsin. Her family has two passions: dairy farming (which is out of necessity) and football (their true delight). D.J.’s older brothers and father were all football stars, and now D.J. herself is playing linebacker for the high school football team. Her life seems to be going well especially when she becomes close with the quarterback of the rival football team, Brian Nelson. However, situations change and D.J. worries when her parents struggle with making ends meet, Brian ignores her around his friends, and her best friend moves away. Still none of that compares to the heartbreak of seeing her older brother, Win, become paralyzed because of a football injury. Soon D.J. becomes the main caretaker of her brother while he goes through rehabilitation, and she learns how to become a stronger person with deeper perspective.

The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock is a sequel to Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen introduces readers to the appealing Schwenk family and D.J. and Brian’s relationship. While it would be helpful to read Dairy Queen first, it is not necessary to enjoy The Off Season. Furthermore, although The Off Season deals with heavy subject matter, there is humor and joy sprinkled throughout the novel. ( )

coming of age, farm life, country life, football, basketball, family responsibility, friendship, romance, female athletes, relationship study, first person narrator, authentic voice, football injury, dealing with illness, tween fiction, ya fiction, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, limited audience, Teen Book Festival ( )

A great follow-up. Does not disappoint. Great characters, compelling story. Can't wait for the third installment. ( )

Booklist, 4/15/2007, Vol. 103 Issue 16, p38-40 ( )

This book picks up where Dairy Queen left off – DJ Schwenk is practicing with the Red Bend football team, things seem to be going well with Brian, and she and Amber are talking again. Her family is another matter – the farm seems to be losing money, and nobody wants to talk about it. When one of her brothers gets hurt, DJ must step up and handle more than she ever thought she could. Even if the situations are heartbreaking, DJ's voice can still be hilarious in this must read sequel. ( )

In this sequel to Dairy Queen, DJ's life is turned upside down again as things happen to her family that she could never have predicted. This novel picks up the week after Dairy Queen ends, with DJ playing football. While she does that for a few games, her big brothers are both playing college football. Her oldest brother, Win, is in a football accident and breaks a vertebrae in his neck, meaning he is partially paralyzed. It's DJ who ends up going to stay with him all over, even though he has never been her closest brother. At the same time, she realizes that Brian, her sort of boyfriend who has never actually taken her on a date, is embarassed to be in public with her. She breaks up with him, and begins to get ready for basketball season. DJ is easily the strongest person in her family - she runs the family farm most of the year and is very tough. Her mom's back goes out from all of the stress, but I still felt it was a little unrealistic to make DJ the sole support for her brother in rehab. Having done part of that myself, I think it is a huge burden to place on a 16 year old, just because the rest of her family can't. Other than that, though, I really liked this book and the characters - I will definitely read book 3 when it comes out later this year. ( )

This was a very good book, if you enjoyed the first one you will deffiantly like this one. It is about how her life changes when something terrible happens to Win. Read the book to find out what happens and how they get through it. ( )

I love this series about a tough farmgirl who plays on the boys' football team. DJ isn't in touch with her emotions, but is forced to be as everything in her life falls apart. The audio book was especially fun to listen to because the reader had such a convincing midwestern accent. ( )

Book Review

David C. Hall
EDCI 4120/5120
Murdock, C. G. (2007). The off season. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Grade Levels: 9-11
Category: Realistic fiction
Read-Alouds: pp. 14-29 (Chapter 3—Football and Barbeque); 55-75(Chapters 7 and 8—A Whole Herd of Trouble Coming My Way and Bad News on All Fronts); 127-152 (Chapters 14 and 15—Win and The Call); 244-261 (Chapters 26 and 27—Getting to Know the New Normal and Big Trip #2)
Summary: D.J. Schwenk enters her junior year of high school with a full plate—she is playing linebacker on the boy’s football team, rebuilding her relationship with her best friend, Amber, and has a budding (romantic?) relationship with the quarterback of Red Bend High School’s biggest rival. When her older brother Win is seriously injured playing college football, D.J.’s life changes drastically, her priorities are re-ordered, and she becomes the person who must hold the family together, supporting her brothers, her mom and her dad, as well as her friends.
Themes: At six feet tall and 17 years of age, D.J. challenges more conventions than just playing linebacker—her best friend Amber is dealing with issues related to her own sexual identity, and D.J. is one of the few people who support her. D.J. also deals with challenges related to her friend Brian’s discomfort with her size and background, which adds to her own self doubt.
In her ability to shoulder responsibility and to provide support for the other members of her family, D.J. demonstrates that adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals character.
Discussion Questions:
When D.J. hurts her shoulder during football practice, she is forced to make a decision—risk further injury and the potential loss of a women’s college basketball scholarship by continuing to play, or quit the team. What did you think of D.J.’s decision? How would you defend her decision to quit the team?
Other than her developing relationship with Brian, D.J. doesn’t have a lot of experience with boys, and Brian only seems interested in her as long as his friends don’t find out. Does the prejudice D.J. experiences as a tall, strong and athletic girl compare to the prejudice her friend Amber lives with? If so, in what ways, and is one worse than the other?

What is it about D.J.’s personality and character that make her able to cope with so much adversity and responsibility, and still be strong for her brothers, her parents, and her friends? Do you think you could handle things, and as many different things, in the way D.J. did?
Reader Response: The Off Season is a warm, funny and surprisingly optimistic novel, considering the plot. The “voice” of the main character, D.J., reads and sounds like someone every young adult should want to know, or have as a close friend.
The Off Season offers a refreshingly real look at small town/farm life, but D.J.’s story is anything but “pastoral”. I loved the real characters, dealing with real problems and ultimately rising above all of them. The Off Season is a life-affirming novel that leaves the reader with a soul filled with hope.

As far as debut novels go, it’s hard to top Murdock’s DAIRY QUEEN, a winning combination of wit and heart, love and loss. But incredibly, she succeeds with its sequel, THE OFF SEASON. It is everything her first book is, and more.

As quite possibly the first girl in her state ever to be on her high school football team, D.J. Schwenk has been getting a lot of attention and publicity lately, and she doesn’t want any of it… particularly as she fears it will make her something-or-other friendship/relationship with Brian Nelson, her rival high school’s star quarterback, even more confusing than it already is. But D.J. never has to go looking for publicity and problems; they come to her. More than ever, she is worried about the future of the Schwenk farm, a dilapidated, outdated relic from the past. Her youngest brother, Curtis, has been mysteriously running off with some girl.

Things only get worse when a bad shoulder injury forces her to quit the football team, going from Most Intriguing Girl in Town to Most Despised. D.J. has no time to wallow in self-pity, however, for not long after that her brother Win is badly injured in a football game and has lost his will to live as a cripple. With all of these issues that SHE has to deal with, it’s no wonder she has no time for schoolwork, friendships, and even Brian. D.J. may be forced to grow up faster than she wants, but maybe some good will come out of it all in the end.

In THE OFF SEASON, Murdock continues her beloved heroine’s story, throwing more hardships her way. The amount D.J. has to deal with may seem like a rural soap opera sometime, but nevertheless D.J. prevails, and so does our admiration and envy of her. She is the best friend you always wish you could have. ( )

I liked this sequel better than The Dairy Queen because the action picked up a lot faster. It's easy to root for this honest, hard-working girl who just so happens to be a linebacker. And even though the plot was a little more heavy than the first book, I think it was handled in a much more balanced way that left me feeling hopeful at the end. I also liked that certain things weren't given a Hollywood ending. ( )

Murdock, Catherine . (2007). The Off Season. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 288 pp. ISBN 0-618-68695-9 (Hardcover); $16.00.

This book, a sequel to the highly recommended Dairy Queen, also deserves to be on our library and classroom shelves because of D.J.'s voice. D.J. Schwenk is now a junior. She is still playing football (with the boys) and her family is still struggling to hang on to their farm. In this book, D.J.’s brother, Win, is severly injured in a televised college football game. Readers believe that D.J. works on a farm, believe that she plays football, believe that she feels socially inept, believe that she is a teen. The setting is fully realized. Farm work does not stop. The physical therapy and Win's injury are described in a unique but entirely believable way. This book may not feel as complete to readers who have not read Dairy Queen, but it will be totally comprehensible and very well written. This book absolutely describes life in a small, rural area. The description of the families getting together to talk about football could have been a description of my wife’s Midwest family.

The sequel to Dairy Queen is, if anything, better than the first book.

D.J.'s football trials ended on a high note, and as summer winds down and a new school year looms ahead, she's almost floating on a cloud. But for the Schwenk family, nothing is ever quite that easy, and when things are going so well, something almost has to go wrong. It does, and in such a big way that nothing will ever be the same again.

In spite of the tragedy at the center of the book the tone is optimistic, not depressing. Dairy Queen's realism was a standout, and Murdock manages the same grounded, hopeful tone here. D.J. and her family are easy to relate to, and the whole book is well-written and thoughtful. A real treat. ( )

I won a set of these books from a book club contest. I just finished the book and can't wait to go back and read Dairy Queen.
DJ is the only girl playing varsity football around. Her life is going along smoothly, so smoothly in fact she feels like the other shoe is about to drop. And it sure does. On top of discovering her family's money troubles that may put the future of their farm in jeopardy, her kind-of boyfriend never wants be seen with her in public, her best friend has stopped coming to school, she hurts her shoulder, and her oldest brother has been seriously injured in a football game. DJ deals with all the turmoils with sincerity. This book was a joy to read! ( )

I really enjoyed Dairy Queen, so I had a feeling I would enjoy this sequel. In the first book, DJ (Darlene Joyce) trains the rival school's quarterback over the summer on her family's Wisconsin dairy farm. That's right. She trains him. Her two older brothers play college football, and DJ was trained right along with them. She loves the sport, and starts to fall in love with Brian. But in this book, she gets hurt during football season. Even good linebackers injure their shoulder sometime. So DJ has to decide--sit out football and rest her shoulder for basketball? or play through the pain and not let her teammates down? And what about Brian? The two of them are dating. Kind of. Except that he doesn't take her places or acknowledge her presence in front of her friends. The dairy farm is failing, too. Oh, and DJ's oldest brother gets hit and stays down. Spinal injury. DJ has to become a mom to her older brother--missing school to help with recovery and being the cheerleader to keep him out of depression. There's a lot packed into this novel, but it's worth it. DJ is one cool chick. And the read of this audiobook deserves a medal for the awesome Wisconsin accents. I felt like I was on vacation. ( )