A victory, if of the minor sort.
When a football coach–turned-principal enforces a new policy requiring every senior to join an athletic team, a group of self-professed geeks, oddballs, and other nonathletes creates a team that challenges the high school’s long-standing sports culture.
Seventeen-year-old Jack Logan’s father and older brothers are local football legends, but he has no interest in becoming an elite athlete. When “Becca the Brain” suggests fielding a soccer team, he is initially reluctant, but Becca’s plan is more about having fun than winning. Together they manage to find enough like-minded students to fill the roster, but with a goalie who falls asleep midgame and a player who speaks only in non sequiturs, they are an eclectic bunch. Their first game is a dismal failure, earning them a dressing-down from the principal and, oddly enough, a huge Internet following. The Losers touch a nerve, driving some to raucous enthusiasm and others to violence. The depiction of jock culture at “Muscles” High is disturbingly accurate, and Jack’s and Becca’s familial struggles are well-played. There is a lot to like here: humor, social commentary, and what it means to be a winner. But the too-easy ending feels rushed and false.
A victory, if of the minor sort. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30136-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
A keenly crafted thriller.
When a suburban high school is devastated by a bombing, a diverse group of teens gathers to find a way out.
Minor connections pre-exist among the group: biracial (black/white) Tad is on the football team with the popular Frankie, a white boy, and the pair may be a little more than just friends. Latino Z has been pegged as the class ne’er-do-well; Palestinian-American Rashid, an observant Muslim, feels extra conspicuous now that his beard has started growing. Of course, everyone knows the white daughter of a U.S. senator, the perfectly popular Diana. The wildcard is olive-skinned Cassandra, the new kid in school. When word reaches the gang that the bomber may still be inside the building, tensions rise and the small bonds just being forged threaten to disintegrate. The third-person perspective shifts chapter to chapter, letting readers into each of the character’s heads. Some of the characters are fuller than others (Z is frustratingly thin), but through their eyes the author lays out the geography of the school before the bombing and smartly paces the aftermath. Charbonneau makes the bold move of letting readers—though not all the characters—know who the bomber is right away. This pivots the suspense from a whodunit to a survival tale, and the author effectively charts the action, taking time to allow the kids to discuss current events and the perils of false assumptions.
A keenly crafted thriller. (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-41670-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Nuanced and riveting in equal parts.
The story of two young Japanese-American men who enlist in the 442nd Regiment, a segregated unit of Japanese-American soldiers and white officers that fought in the European Theater.
Before getting to the war, Hughes provides an on-the-ground view of the American government roundup of Japanese immigrants and citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, their detainment, and eventual transport to internment camps. As seen through the eyes of Topaz internees Yuki and his friend Shig, fighting for the United States would redeem their honor as Americans, but gradually their perspective changes. They learn that honor is not a public display but rather something earned (or not) by comrades undergoing extreme hardship and covering one another’s backs. Hughes sends these men through the wringer. They endure foot rot and the stress of taking the next hill (which is worse is up for grabs), and they also grapple with the consequences: how does one reconcile shooting a kid, even if he’s an enemy soldier? Yuki reflects that “what he and Shig were doing—and the Germans, too—was brutal, disgusting,” and he would “spend his life trying to remove all this ugliness from his head and his hands.” Throughout, Hughes never shies from the institutionalized bigotry that put these Americans of Japanese ancestry into harm’s way more than their fair share of times.
Nuanced and riveting in equal parts. (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6252-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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