Josh, the amazingly gifted baseball player introduced in Baseball Great (2009), finds new intrigue. This time, a retired Major League player turned actor is flamboyantly supporting his son, the pitcher on a rival team. Right from the beginning, Green makes plain the mishaps and pain that are involved in serious dedication to a sport. Cheating, once again, is the focus, with Josh’s daring, Benji’s humorous brash talk and Jaden’s journalistic dedication all combining to uncover the wrongdoing. Although this is not an especially difficult plot to understand, there is yet a complexity of interconnecting factors that draws the reader in, along with some Hollywood-type glitz and folderol. Some little-known aspects of the sport are shown, but the focus is less on the actual games than on the off-the-field activities and influences. Not much of the plot is realistic, and peripheral characters are stereotypes. Dedicated fans who delight in the details will appreciate the sleuthing, but many will long for more play-by-play time. (Mystery. 11-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-162692-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A legally blind seventh-grader with clearer vision than most wins acceptance in a new Florida school as his football-hero older brother self-destructs in this absorbing, multi-stranded debut. Paul's thick lenses don't keep him from being a first-rate soccer goalie, but they do make him, willy-nilly, a "handicapped" student and thus, according to his new coach, ineligible to play. After a giant sinkhole swallows much of his ramshackle school, Paul is able to transfer to another school where, with some parental collusion, he can keep his legal status a secret. It turns out to be a rough place, where "minorities are in the majority," but Paul fits himself in, playing on the superb soccer team (as a substitute for one of the female stars of the group) and pitching in when a freeze threatens the citrus groves. Bloor fills in the setting with authority and broad irony: In Tangerine County, Florida, groves are being replaced by poorly designed housing developments through which drift clouds of mosquitoes and smoke from unquenchable "muck fires." Football is so big that not even the death of a player struck by lightning during practice gets in the way of NFL dreams; no one, including Paul's parents, sees how vicious and amoral his brother, Erik, is off the field. Smart, adaptable, and anchored by a strong sense of self-worth, Paul makes a memorable protagonist in a cast of vividly drawn characters; multiple yet taut plotlines lead to a series of gripping climaxes and revelations. Readers are going to want more from this author. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-201246-X
Page Count: 293
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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