A thrilling and nuanced baseball story proving that determination and compassion can coexist.
Twelve-year-old William Henry Roberts III—known as Trip—faces bumps on the road to winning his last Little League championship.
Trip’s baseball roots run deep: His dad’s team won the Little League championship when he was 12, and Grandpa was a minor-league ballplayer. Trip is well aware of the family legacy of baseball, but he feels the heavy expectation to achieve and struggles to carve out a legacy of his own. After his father, who’s a Marine, is deployed overseas, Trip shoulders responsibilities on the field as captain and at home, where Dad tells him to “Take care of your mom and your sisters.” He assumes these roles with great seriousness, but troubling news about his father adds stress, and his team leadership is tested when Samantha “Sam” Callahan joins them and teammate Dylan makes derisive remarks. Trip questions whether he can give his all to both baseball and family. The authentic first-person narration shows him facing pressures and reassessing the importance of family. His relationship with Sam is nuanced: Dad, Coach, and Trip are supportive of girls’ inclusion and believe in girls’ equality, but Trip’s admiration for Sam’s talent stirs up feelings of jealousy and self-doubt. As the season unfolds, Trip confronts uncomfortable realities and learns to be guided by his conscience, shaping a legacy that extends far beyond the baseball diamond. Main characters are cued white.
A thrilling and nuanced baseball story proving that determination and compassion can coexist. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781682637746
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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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A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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