Thoughtfully portrays a boy who’s balancing hoop dreams and emotional maturity to achieve impressive ends.
Being the best on the court doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot to learn about playing the game of life.
Being a top-ranked player comes with a lot of new pressures for 14-year-old basketball phenom Kofi Douglass. Though their Milwaukee community has suffered a recent tragic loss, Kofi and his mother are also still reeling from the day his father was arrested seven years ago—and basketball has become a complicated way of coping. Through all the challenges, Kofi has a staunch best friend in Mecca, but even she’s beginning to recognize how he’s started to let basketball and his ego get in his own way. Meanwhile, former friend (now bitter rival) Ripp Ransom will take advantage of any misstep to get ahead of Kofi, leading to some action-packed showdowns on the court. These scenes, coupled with flashbacks that contextualize Kofi’s story, make for a compelling sports drama with a lot of heart. In this stand-alone companion to Shot Clock (2022), the authors believably frame Kofi’s slow path toward maturity on and off the court, presenting it as the real key to his overall success. Ballplayers will appreciate the hoops details, playful slang, and healthy dose of trash talk, while the images of healing from loss and unfairness will be accessible and refreshing for any readers. The cast members predominantly read Black.
Thoughtfully portrays a boy who’s balancing hoop dreams and emotional maturity to achieve impressive ends. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780063069640
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PROFILES
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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