A useful and sometimes inspiring how-to for aspiring bee athletes, full of revealing information and canny tactics.
Memorize and analyze your way to victory with this no-nonsense guide to spelling bees.
Vukoti, a 15-year-old spelling prodigy who made it to the hallowed Scripps National Spelling Bee six times and spelled the titular longest English word on the TV showLittle Big Shots, offers tips, tricks, and a systematic approach to spelling exceptionally hard words. He begins with a training regimen based on memorizing the official Words of the Champions list drawn from the half-million entries in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary in addition to self-made lists of difficult-to-spell items that, say, begin with silent consonants; he recommends studying at least one hour per day and having parents drill spellers in informal home bees. The book’s heart is a long section on spelling rules and patterns in English—i before e except after c, for example—as well as Latin, Greek, French, Maori, and the many other languages that have contributed words to the Merriam-Webster hoard. (Among the challenges bee competitors could face, the author notes, are the Old English fossils fyrd, gesithcundman, and hamsocn, and the German jawbreakers auftaktigkeit, sprachgefühl, and schuetzenfest.) Vukoti also proffers his list of 206 “roots” that constitute core components of many English words, from able (Latin for “capable of,” as in accountable) to xyl (Greek for “wood,” as in xylophone). He goes on to lay out bee-day strategies on getting over stage fright (“start by taking slow, deliberate breaths”) and asking the eight questions about a word’s dictionary entry that contestants are allowed to pose to judges. (Asking for alternate pronunciations might reveal crucial silent letters, he notes, while asking for the definition can distinguish between homonyms like stationary and stationery.) And should a reader win a regional bee—or the National Bee itself—Vukoti recommends preparing scripted soundbites for the ensuing media hoopla.
Aimed at the younger-than-15 smart and studious reader who is both eligible for the Scripps Bee and serious about it, Vukoti’s book works both as a training manual and as an orthographic study in the translation of sounds into letters. The writing is straightforward, lucid, and practical (“Many words follow straightforward spelling rules, and second-guessing yourself by adding extra letters or using uncommon spelling patterns can steer you in the wrong direction”), but it also has enough erudite insight to allow grown-up linguistics mavens to learn new things as well—in English, Vukoti notes, “when you hear a ‘th’ sound at the end of a word, be very careful as to note whether it ends in \th\ (as in think) or \th\ (as in this). The voiceless \th\ will always be spelled with a -th (wreath, breath, loath) at the end of words, but the voiced \th\ will be spelled with a -the (wreathe, breathe, loathe).” In some grimly lyrical passages, the author’s prose breathes the indomitable spirit of the middle schooler in the arena, a hard-won readiness to fall and then to rise. (“Most people tend to remember their losses for the first few days, the first week, maybe the first month. However, the person who remembers until next year’s bee and has the burning desire to avenge their loss will eventually emerge as the next champion.”) Hardcore spellers will get both know-how and reassurance from Vukoti’s advice.
A useful and sometimes inspiring how-to for aspiring bee athletes, full of revealing information and canny tactics.Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781646871896
Page Count: 182
Publisher: SmallPub
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Longwinded though affecting tribute to resilience and solidarity.
Even a Category 5 hurricane can’t stop a revered coach and his championship high-school football team.
Popular historian Thompson (Driving with the Devil, 2006, etc.) begins in the locker room of New Orleans’ John Curtis Christian School on August 26, 2005. It was the night of the “jamboree” scrimmage that opened the season, and members of the Patriots were hoping to win another state championship for their school. Nationally recognized coach J.T. Curtis, also the school’s headmaster and son of its founder, knew that his hardworking, enthusiastic squad couldn’t compare to last year’s lineup. Many key players had graduated to college ball, and he needed to mentally and physically condition a young, unproven team with efficient, college-level practices consisting of “equal parts Broadway musical and football drills.” The 2005-6 Patriots included an anxious new starting quarterback, a Harvard hopeful, a spiritual heavyweight and a star linebacker whose religion forbade him to play on Friday nights. John Curtis School favored community building and happiness over flashy exteriors, and Coach Curtis reflected those values in his broadminded teaching style and paternal approach to his players’ personal lives. Hurricane Katrina confronted him and his team with the ultimate challenge. Returning to the drowned city, J.T. found the school in miraculously good shape and set out to reunite his squad and get them on the field again. Some players were tempted to join teams in other school districts, and Hurricane Rita tested them once again, but the devoted coach kept on plugging. Thompson deftly profiles a generous selection of players and families torn apart by the disaster and considers the contagious obsession for football shared by participants and fans alike. In a somewhat meandering fashion, he delivers a fully realized interpretative portrait of a coach and a sports organization willing to sacrifice all in the name of football.
Longwinded though affecting tribute to resilience and solidarity.Pub Date: July 31, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4070-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
A noble debut with its heart in the right place, but lacking the substance of its spiritual cousin, Hoop Dreams.
Friday Night Lights meets Boyz n the Hood on the mean streets of Boston.
Obsessive basketball coach Jack O’Brien was a beloved mainstay at Charlestown High School, leading its team to multiple championships. What made his accomplishments so impressive was the fact that his team was comprised of young men from the projects who were bussed into school. During the 2004-05 season documented here, Charlestown was led by Jason “Hood” White, a cornrowed guard who, when he was three, was run over and almost killed by a crackhead on her way to get a fix. As important as it was for O’Brien to take another title, it was just as vital that his players get into college or, at the very least, survive the streets. If that meant helping Hood navigate his way through the Massachusetts court system, so be it. Award-winning Boston Globe Magazine staff writer Swidey comes from a hard-news background, which proves a double-edged sword in executing this hoops-in-the-hood book. His straight journalistic chops infuse the legal proceedings and the player profiles with a higher-than-expected level of gravitas, but his depictions of the games are less than gripping. Since basketball was the primary raison d’être for O’Brien and his brood, the lack of fire in the sports reporting diminishes its significance. (Swidey could take some lessons in suspense from Jack McCallum’s Seven Seconds or Less, 2006.) Perhaps the author seeks to emphasize that basketball should enhance people’s lives, not overwhelm them—a fair sentiment, but it doesn’t make for the kind of book that will resonate beyond a niche audience.
A noble debut with its heart in the right place, but lacking the substance of its spiritual cousin, Hoop Dreams.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58648-469-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
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