A pass that never reaches the goal.
A 12-year-old faces her fears of failure and rejection when she joins the girls’ ice hockey team at her middle school.
After her embarrassing play at basketball camp two summers ago, white Canadian seventh grader Bea Mullins swore she would never play a team sport again. But a flood in the gym cancels class for the semester, and students are urged to take up extracurricular sports instead. At the insistence of her best (and only) friend, Celia Chan, Bea reluctantly agrees to sign up for the girls’ hockey team, which will be disqualified if they don’t find enough players to meet league regulations. Bea is convinced everyone on the team will blame her if they lose, especially Gabriela Vega Martínez, one of the co-founders, who dreams of playing professionally. But Bea soon discovers that most of her teammates are beginners, too, and Gabi may even want to be her friend. As Bea finds her footing on the ice, she must confront her own self-doubt, deal with challenges in her friendships, navigate new same-sex romantic feelings, and learn how to support her team. Although the premise is engaging, the story and the message of inclusion suffer from weak characterization, particularly in the cast of secondary characters, who are developed only at a surface level. Ambitious, driven, overachieving Chinese Canadian Celia isn’t well rounded enough as a personality to move beyond stereotype, while Colombian immigrant Gabi feels developed primarily to teach a message.
A pass that never reaches the goal. (author’s note) (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593808894
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
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
SEEN & HEARD
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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