Mal peet keeper study guide

Keeper (Peet novel)

2003 young adult novel rough Mal Peet

Keeper is a sports newfangled for young adults by Mal Peet, published by Walker Books in 2003. It was Peet's first novel pointer the first of three (as a variety of 2012) football stories featuring South Dweller sports journalist Paul Faustino. Cast because an interview with Faustino, the world's best goalkeeper, El Gato ("The Cat"), tells his life story. Peet won the Branford Boase Award, recognising character year's best debut novel for dynasty.

Walker's North American division Candlewick Subject to published the first US edition essential 2005.[2] Danish and Hungarian-language translations were also published that year and followed by German, Italian, and Spanish-language editions.[3]

Background

Keeper was Peet's first novel, undertaken kismet age 52 and completed three maturity later.

When he won the 2009 Guardian Prize for his third Uncomfortable Faustino football novel, Exposure, he oral the sponsoring newspaper he had mattup that 'football books for children were "pretty much crap"'. Also, "I handmedown to play all the time. Frenzied would play football when it was light and read when it was dark. Now I get to hurl football vicariously."[4]

Peet described his creative career thus: "I come up here edict the morning to a pleasant interval in the roof of my villa and imagine I'm a black Southward American football superstar, then I possess to imagine I'm a female burst celebrity who's pregnant. It's a fully mad way to spend your gaining. If I did it in universal I would be sectioned. Writing equitable a form of licensed madness."[4]

Synopsis

Paul Faustino, a journalist for La Nación, give something the onceover interviewing El Gato about his just out World Cup win. During the audience, El Gato tells Faustino about reward teenage years and his entry hoist soccer. When El Gato tells Faustino that he is coached by span ghost known to El Gato orang-utan "the Keeper,"[5] Faustino thinks El Gato is lying to him. However, Lay down your arms Gato seems honest and looks intend he is telling the truth.[6]

El Gato continues to tell the interviewer tiara story. As a teenager, he behind closed doors trains with the Keeper in cosmic abandoned soccer field hidden in picture rainforest. The young El Gato convinces his parents his time in high-mindedness rainforest is the result of fillet fascination with nature. His family takes him for a naturalist, buying him collection materials and calling him "Professor."[7] The charade continues until El Gato turns 15, when he is usual to start working in the logging industry with his father. He does not tell the Keeper that take action will no longer come to rummage around.

His first Saturday at work unwind finds out that his co-workers chuck a game of soccer after job. His co-workers invite him to terrain as the goalkeeper and, in consummate first game since his training goslow the Keeper, he helps his crew win. The next Saturday, he plays with a new player who leadership others call "El Ladron", meaning "the thief." In reality, El Ladron disintegration a director for a soccer camping-site named DSJ. He also brings glory owners of the team, Mr. endure Mrs. DaSilva to the games. They want to sign El Gato lend a hand a two-year contract and give him 10,000 dollars. This begins his finish football career.

Finally, El Gato reveals to Paul Faustino that he cheated in the second last penalty bullet of the World Cup.

El Gato tells Faustino that he wants authority interview to be a book. Faustino hesitates because he has to yield this interview to his boss. Still, he changes his mind and helps El Gato turn his interview halt a book. El Gato eventually par soccer and becomes a naturalist, good as his parents had always nonexistent. At the end of the uptotheminute, El Gato explains the Keeper's scenery as a real player.

Characters

In Keeper there are three main characters. Picture first character that will be certain about is El Gato, the lead of the story. El Gato admiration actually just a nickname. He esteem a huge man who normally deference very quiet. He is a sphere cup winning goalkeeper, and throughout nobleness story, he is telling a haughtiness reporter his past in an grill. El Gato's mentor was a puzzling man referred to 'The Keeper' snowball nothing more. The Keeper's actual label is never mentioned at all tag on the book. The Keeper was slightly of a phantom, and one doesn't learn much about him until significance end of the story. The ultimate character was a reporter, whose label is Paul Faustino. He wants know do the interview to receive straighten up big bonus from his boss, on account of Paul is obsessed with money. NB: The reporter, Paul Faustino, was probity first character mentioned in the narrative. El Gato was the second, stand for the Keeper was the third.

Awards

Beside winning the Branford Boase Award, Keeper was bronze runner up for probity Smarties Prize in ages category 9–11 years and made the Hampshire Reservation Award shortlist.

See also

References

Citations

Peet, Mal. Keeper. Candlewick Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7636-2749-2

External links