Fifteen-year-old Jack Walsh is elevated from head exercise rider to “bug boy,” or apprentice jockey, after another jockey is severely injured during a race. The Saratoga Race Course in 1934 is vividly realized in Jack’s believable first-person, present-tense narration, as he navigates the dangers success brings. A gangster pressures him to deliberately lose a big race, a wealthy young female bookie energetically seduces him, his father arrives back on the scene after abandoning him as a child to a physically and sexually abusive horse trainer, and he endures the constant, graphically portrayed imperative to lose large amounts of weight quickly in order to be light enough to race. Luper is at his best depicting races that are both thrilling and plausible as Jack strategizes his way past more experienced but less clever riders. Occasional violence, sexuality and Jack’s extreme weight-loss efforts make this a more suitable read for older teens, who will find themselves thundering through the home stretch in order to discover whether Jack will win, place or show in this first-rate novel. (Historical fiction. 13 & up)
Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-374-31000-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Marcus is black and Eddie white in a multicultural Long Island neighborhood. Known to all as “Black and White,” they have honed their athletic skills together and are in the midst of a basketball season headed to the playoffs and scholarships to good colleges. They know each other’s timing and rhythm and feel complete trust in each other. However, off the court they have decided to supplement their income by holding up strangers for money for senior activities and the latest athletic shoes. Using Grandpa’s gun from Eddie’s attic, both think their initial success means invincibility. The nightmare that ensues when Eddie inadvertently hits the trigger—and their victim—becomes the playing field for the author’s exploration of how much difference race can make in the fate of each boy and their friendship. Rather than exploring the issue of race by pretending it doesn’t exist, Volponi points directly at it, illustrating at every turn that the race of the various characters influences events as well as whether Marcus will end up in prison alone. Consequences for everyone unfold and escalate in rapid-fire fashion. Hugely discussable. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-06006-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0142413836
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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