In this slim, fast-reading series opener, readers meet the ambitious co-ed Alton Heights basketball team as they challenge the privileged kids from a nearby prep school to a showdown.
Best friends Cam, Tyler, and Markus have been waiting for Center Park Elementary’s basketball season to start for what seems to be an eternity—so they are deflated by the news that the program has been cut. Mrs. Avery intervenes, creating space for the three boys to practice in the school’s dusty gym after they get their work done. The boys practice, practice, and practice some more up until they run into the Golden Roots Prep team in the park. They challenge Golden Roots Prep to a game, but there’s only one problem: A basketball team is five players, and the boys only have three. Where will they find two more competent players? There’s Jasmine and Brianna, who are pretty good…but they are girls. Can they team up to defend the honor of their home, the Alton Heights housing complex, against the rich kids with resources? The story comes from a good place, but it doesn’t devote enough warm-up time to developing whole, authentic characters. Racially coded names, a reference to Cam’s braids, and a stylized depiction of their hands done in black ink will likely have readers inferring that the Alton Heights kids are black, but class issues share space with basketball as dominant themes.
Here’s hoping a fun basketball series develops in its later installments. (Fiction. 7-11)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5383-8212-7
Page Count: 66
Publisher: West 44 Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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