VITA MAKES A TEAM Selected for 2023 Write Team Mentorship Program
June 20, 2023—VITA MAKES A TEAM, a MG Contemporary manuscript, has been selected for the Write Team Mentorship Program (WTMP) by MG and YA author Lindsey Hewett.
VITA MAKES A TEAM follows anxious student athlete Vita and her best friend Mickey as they struggle to complete their bucket list—and keep their connection strong—when Vita is taken to an off-the-grid sleepaway camp. See below for more details.
WTMP is an open-ended, four-month mentorship focused on professional development. The program provides manuscript critique, career guidance, and a support network of peers for the selected mentees.
VITA MAKES A TEAM
This year has been one long worst-case scenario for 12-year-old Vita Rossi. She tore her rotator cuff, quit tennis, and got ditched by her tennis friends like a ball out of play. By the time she finishes a painful stint of physical therapy, all she has left is her BFF Mickey—but their friendship is under siege. Vita has to spend summer vacation at the same sleepaway camp as Mickey’s sworn rivals from school: the soccer girls. Vita is anxious Mickey might ditch her, too, for a new BFF who isn’t cross-contaminated, so she creates a long-distance bucket list to score extra friendship points while she’s away.
But to Vita’s horror, camp is in the middle of Nowhere, Maine. There’s no service, no way to cross off the list together, and no one around to help—except the socially out-of-bounds soccer girls. Vita makes a risky game-time decision: team up with them to test-drive activities (and hope Mickey never finds out). Soon they’re bonding over a knockout movie tournament and epic ice-cream challenge, but there’s a catch: they want Vita to try soccer too. The further down the list they go, the closer Vita grows to her new friends, and the harder it gets keeping her anxieties in check. She isn’t just scared of losing Mickey; since getting hurt she’s been scared of returning to sports altogether. But she starts to see that having a team—even if it’s a soccer team—helps her outmaneuver any fear.
Just as Vita feels like she’s finally caught an upswing, she faces her worst worst-case scenario yet—Mickey shows up and catches Vita playing soccer with the enemy. She forces Vita to choose: it’s her or the soccer girls. Vita can’t stay friends with both.
