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
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
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