Baseball, both minor league and Little League, forms the throughline for this exploration of grief.
Pitcher Quinnen Donnelly is reluctant to go back to playing baseball because she’s still mourning her sister, Haley, who died nine months ago; her family’s decision to board a player for the local minor league team, the Bandits, may provide welcome distraction. The book shifts back and forth in time. Some chapters take place the summer before the death, and some are set in the present. Haley is such an appealing character that readers may mourn her, too. But the unusual structure creates an odd effect: the story seems to be counting down, over the length of the book, to Haley’s death. This generates suspense, but during the slower passages, readers may wonder, guiltily, how soon it’ll happen. They might be more engaged by other characters, like Quinnen’s friend Hector, a Bandits player from the Dominican Republic, who’s going through a slump. There’s also Brandon, the extremely blond, extremely tan, extremely arrogant player who stays with the Donnellys. Their plotlines are less predictable than the somber main story. Bishop is often ambiguous about race, though Hector is described as having “dark brown skin”; the cover illustration reveals Quinnen to be white.
The life-and-death themes are thought-provoking, but readers may love the book even more for its many digressions. (baseball glossary) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93871-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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SEEN & HEARD
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)
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A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevie and Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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