A heartfelt mix of basketball, theater, math, and friendship that’s marred by stereotypical representation.
An Ohio boy puts together his own basketball team of mismatched seventh graders.
When best friends Jax and Nic are cut from the middle school basketball team, Jax impulsively tells their coach, “We’ll make our own team. And we’ll be better than yours.” Luke, who’s 6 feet, 3 inches tall, is more interested in acting than basketball, but he doesn’t get a part in the school play. Jax recruits Luke as a player in exchange for taking part in a theater competition with him. Eventually, the team members connect with intelligent, precocious, and lonely classmate Miley, who wants to improve her sports statistics skills: Helping the team improve their play would give her great college application material. The story is told through Jax’s, Luke’s, and Miley’s alternating first-person points of view. Miley’s entries appear as doodle-filled graphic journal entries. Full of drama, miscalculations, and turnovers, this story explores a fun scenario in which a bunch of kids with different interests and skills work together for a common purpose. Unfortunately, the innocent fun is undermined by racialized portrayals of two teammates in the otherwise largely white-presenting cast. Nic is cued Black, and his father is in jail, while teammate Koa, who’s cued Pasifika, is repeatedly described in an othering way that references his “bush of curly hair” and the nickname “Animal” (from his old school); he’s also “been through some stuff” that’s similar to Nic’s trauma.
A heartfelt mix of basketball, theater, math, and friendship that’s marred by stereotypical representation. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781639933839
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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