A new student teacher and a young San Antonio high school football coach score “a touchdown for love” in this steamy but decorous romance. Before Kaylene Morales even reports to her supervising teacher, she manages to slop mop water over hunky coach Alex Garrison. The relationship develops from there (though it actually began ten years before, when Alex was her older brother’s classmate and she had a mad crush on him), into long phone conversations, dinners, passionate necking on the sofa, a falling out while Kaylene frets over Alex’s preoccupation with that “hard-hearted wench” football, and finally a climactic clinch and proposal. In the meantime, as Alex juggles his growing love with the heavy demands of Texas football, Kaylene throws out her dull lesson plans for innovative new ones, and endures mild challenges from her students. Romance fans and other tenderhearts will sigh over Bertrand’s mauve prose, no matter how unpolished it is. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Dec. 30, 1998
ISBN: 1-55885-245-X
Page Count: 146
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
A child’s feelings of loneliness and isolation are eventually replaced with a longing for adventure in a mysterious book from Nascimbene (A Day in September, 1995, not reviewed). Sent to a boarding school in the Swiss Alps for the summer while her parents are vacationing, L£cia, homesick for S—o Paulo and family, remains detached from all activities until the day she hears distant hammering emanating from a local barn. Intrigued, L£cia discovers a kind farmer named Aldo behind the sound; he is keeping a secret from the outside world. Befriending the girl after she pours out her heart to him, Aldo decides to show her the large sailboat he has been building. L£cia, who renames all the wildflowers she finds according to her wishes, finds a wildflower she calls Ocean Deep and sends it to her parents, foreshadowing the dream she is to have later aboard Aldo’s boat; in this dream she sails close enough to her shipbound parents to wave at them. The beautifully conceived illustrations have a range of appearances, from the look of cut-paper silhouettes whose spaces have been washed in watercolor, to landscapes and seascapes with perspectives and of a simplicity of line associated with Japanese art. The typeface, though attractive, is a small size that makes this better for read-aloud sessions than reading alone; the story, long for a picture book, but deeply felt, is ripe for the interpretation of children. (Picture book. 7-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56846-161-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
Fans of this new professional sport will have to ease past the forced pitch of these capsule looks at some of the better-known stars of the game. Each biographical note contains the person’s vital statistics and an impressing listing of honors. Another section introduces each of the WNBA teams, with rosters, records, and notes; the same attention is given to the upstart American Basketball League. A final section consists of a brief women’s basketball trivia quiz. This text feels hastily assembled; Ponti equates a conversational tone with infractions of grammar and lazy transitions. Those who want to know why this sport, which dates back—barely—to 1996, has burst on the scene so quickly and continues to draw crowds, will have to turn to more solid coverage found in national magazines. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-03275-5
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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