Solidly drawn, both on and off the court.
"Triple threat" Alex Myers turns his attention from football to basketball in this middle volume (The Walk On, 2014).
Alex's journey through basketball season is initially episodic. First, Alex and his teammate Jonas Ellington are forced to play junior varsity because gruff Coach Archer doesn't see football commitments as valid reasons for missing basketball practice. When they finally do join the varsity team, the boys—both freshmen—easily outplay their senior teammates, causing resentment. Meanwhile, Alex shyly courts Christine Whitford, a tenacious reporter for the school newspaper, and deals with the fallout from his parents' divorce, including a budding romance between Coach Archer and Alex's mom. When Max Bellotti, a transfer student whose own parents are divorcing, arrives midseason, the team finally has enough skilled players to be competitive. The story coalesces around Max's disclosure—first to Alex, Jonas, and Christine, and later to the general public—that he is gay. In contrast to older teen sports coming-out stories (Bill Konigsberg's 2008 Out of the Pocket, for example), the team stands largely united behind Max. In fact, some of Alex's retorts to nosy outsiders' questions read like a tutorial for supporting someone who is coming out. Woven into these many interpersonal story arcs are suspenseful and well-dramatized sports action scenes.
Solidly drawn, both on and off the court. (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-75350-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
In a morality tale with all the breeziness and exaggeration of a teen movie, an eighth-grade mean girl loses her status and becomes only slightly less mean.
The lead in the school musical and the host of an advice segment on the school's TV channel, Kacey Simon starts at the top. Then a failure to care for her new purple contacts and a fall at her friend Molly's boy-girl birthday party doom Kacey to the ultimate in loser accessories: glasses and braces. Saddled with a braces-related speech impediment along with her geeky new look, Kacey finds herself at the bottom of the pecking order. Molly and other former friends circulate a YouTube video mocking Kacey's lisp, and, somewhat unrealistically, the drama teacher immediately removes her from the school play. Luckily (and, one might argue, undeservedly), two outcasts support the fallen queen of mean. Paige, a student-government enthusiast, helps Kacey with a plan to regain her popularity. Zander, an indie rocker who wears, to Kacey's horror, skinny jeans, grudgingly accepts Kacey as his band's lead singer. Despite the book's ostensible stance against meanness, Kacey regains her social standing largely by bullying and manipulating her old friends, and the notion that glasses and braces must always spell social ruin is left unquestioned.
Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-06825-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Poppy/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
A plucky orphan runs away to join an intergalactic circus in this frenetic science-fiction/adventure tale.
After bullies at the Bleeker Academy for Girls prevent her from attending a gymnastics competition—and thus becoming an astronaut—and a mysterious man visits her in the middle of the night, 15-year-old Beatrix Ling finds refuge with a space-faring circus. The performers aboard the Big Top are all Tinker-touched, spreading diversity and color where the descendants of the Mandate leave conformity and order. Trix’s suddenly pink hair helps her fit in, but she seems to lack superpowers like her classmates’. Trying to juggle homework—because even spaceships have school—the social scene and her budding affection for the enigmatic Ringmaster, Trix must also protect her parents’ special rock and outrun the villainous Nyl, an agent of the Mandate. The razzle-dazzle of circus life in outer space and the constant action offer plenty of distraction from the sometimes contrived plot, abundant similes and occasionally melodramatic dialogue. Fagan’s (The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle, 2010) vibrant and tactile descriptions make for a cinematic read, and certain elements are reminiscent of such fantasy and science-fiction mainstays as Doctor Who, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Harry Potter.
A book that reaches for the stars and provides a thrilling ride. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-58136-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
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