Brisk sports action enhanced by treatment of personal, political, and racial stereotyping issues.
Challenges dog two star players both on and off the court.
Fresh from soccer triumphs in Benchwarmers (2019), sixth grade buds Jeff Michaels and Andi Carillo eagerly sign up for, respectively, Merion Middle School’s boys and girls b-ball teams. Jeff discovers bullying soccer nemesis Ron Arlow is likewise trying out for point guard, and Andi is saddled with Amy Josephson, a coach who admits that she’s never coached before. Frictions develop as the two squads get off to stumbling starts—but the girls have by far the worst of it, as Coach Josephson proves ignorant of hoops strategy and tactics, benches Andi for imagined insubordination, and then caps it all by making racist remarks about black athletes. Feinstein’s game descriptions are tight and exciting for any reader but even moreso for those who know a pick and roll from a zone trap. At the end the drama moves from basketball court to food court as Jeff and Andi go from jock friends to something closer…and even to the courtroom after the offer from Fran Dunphy (an actual, renowned college coach) to take over the girls team draws an injunction from the teachers union. Both young jocks show that when the pressure is on, they’ve got game in life as well as hoops. Most of the cast is white; some players are African American (and one is generically Asian).
Brisk sports action enhanced by treatment of personal, political, and racial stereotyping issues. (Sports fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-31205-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/The Walking Dead/Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats.
The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on—and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness.
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22078-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
A thrilling conclusion to a beautifully crafted, heart-stopping trilogy.
This is the moment teens Seth, Anaya, and Petra have both been anticipating and dreading ever since aliens called cryptogens began attempting to colonize the Earth: the chance to defend their planet.
In an earlier volume, Seth, Anaya, and Petra began growing physical characteristics that made them realize they were half alien. Seth has wings, Petra has a tail, and Anaya has fur. They also have the power of telepathy, which Anaya uses to converse with Terra, a cryptogen rebel looking for human allies who could help stop the invasion of Earth. Terra plans to use a virus stored in the three teens’ bodies to disarm the flyers, which are the winged aliens that are both masterminding the invasion and enslaving the other species of cryptogens known as swimmers and runners. But Terra and her allies can’t pull any of this off without the help of Anaya, Seth, and Petra. Although the trio is anxious about their abilities, they don’t have much of a choice—the entire human race is depending on them for salvation. Like its predecessors, this trilogy closer is fast-paced and well structured. Despite its post-apocalyptic setting, the story is fundamentally character driven, and it is incredibly satisfying to watch each protagonist overcome their inner battles within the context of the larger human-alien war. Main characters read as White.
A thrilling conclusion to a beautifully crafted, heart-stopping trilogy. (Science fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-80-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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