An action-packed, heartfelt story that elucidates the importance of mental health care to young athletes.
Major league baseball player Stroman’s semiautobiographical series starter follows a talented young athlete who learns to handle anxiety on and off the field.
It’s the summer before middle school, and Marcus—who shares a name with the book’s author—is enjoying participating in practice camps for both baseball and basketball until his baseball coach hits the team with an announcement: The players must undergo an “assessment” to earn a spot on the spring team. Meanwhile, though his parents’ divorce is amicable—even as they deal with the strict schedules and expenses required for elite athletics—the separation of their households adds even more pressure for a kid already striving for perfection. With his assessment looming, small things find their ways under Marcus’ skin more easily, leading his perceptive mom to schedule him a visit with a mental health coach who teaches him to cope with the stress of high expectations. While not everything depicted here happened to Stroman, he shares much with his earnest protagonist, like his determination and uncertainties. The author’s note works to destigmatize and normalize mental health care. Practice and game-play details and an entertaining if not particularly deeply developed cast of secondary characters are assets to the pacing. Hints in the text suggest that Marcus, like the author (the son of a Puerto Rican mother and Black father), is biracial.
An action-packed, heartfelt story that elucidates the importance of mental health care to young athletes. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781665916141
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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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