Inspiring reading for students and teachers striving for excellence against the odds.
A former NFL coach recounts his experiences coaching high school students from a marginalized community.
Lowe’s storyline is the stuff of countless memoirs and films: A good-hearted teacher counsels young people whom society has sidelined, taking their football team into championship territory. After college ball and a brief career coaching in the NFL, the author returned to his Portland, Oregon, hometown, “the whitest city in America”—in just about every neighborhood except that of Parkrose High School, a low-income area “where the first programs to be affected when it came to school budgets were the sports programs.” The previous three football seasons had yielded a record of 0-23. Lowe turned that around, against the odds, by insisting that his players were a kind of family and treating them accordingly—including the demand that the players treat him and each other with respect. To accomplish this, he had to sideline some of the best on the roster until they took his requirements seriously. In the end, they went up against one of the best squads in the city and, of course, won—even if they were defeated later in the championship cycle. “The Broncos fought and battled,” writes Lowe, “but ultimately didn’t come out victorious in the quarterfinals of the state playoffs. The ride was over, but the legendary season would live on forever.” There’s not much surprising in the narrative, though there are a few wrinkles that teachers in wealthier schools might not encounter—e.g., one of the best players is homeless, and most grapple with broken homes and lack of resources. One memorable moment is when Lowe faces down a student armed with a shotgun, a moment he characterizes as a “young man…crying for help.” There’s some tough love here that’s useful, too, as when Lowe insists, “Anything worth a shit or worth achieving takes dedication.”
Inspiring reading for students and teachers striving for excellence against the odds.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-80763-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is a man who has seen it all, and he sure does know how to tell a story.
Fighting back against a nearly fatal health crisis, a renowned foreign correspondent reviews his career.
New York Times journalist Nordland, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has reported from more than 150 countries. Working in Delhi on July 4, 2019, he had a seizure and lost consciousness. At that point, he began his “second life,” one defined by a glioblastoma multiforme tumor. “From 3 to 6 percent of glioblastoma patients are cured; one of them will bear my name,” writes the author, while claiming that the disease “has proved to be the best thing that ever happened to me.” From the perspective of his second life, which marked the end of his estrangement from his adult children, he reflects on his first, which began with a difficult childhood in Philadelphia. His abusive father was a “predatory pedophile.” His mother, fortunately, was “astonishingly patient and saintly,” and Nordland and his younger siblings stuck close together. After a brief phase of youthful criminality, the author began his career in journalism at the Penn State campus newspaper. Interspersing numerous landmark articles—some less interesting than others, but the best are wonderful—Nordland shows how he carried out the burden of being his father’s son: “Whether in Bosnia or Kabul, Cambodia or Nigeria, Philadelphia or Baghdad, I always seemed to gravitate toward stories about vulnerable people, especially women and children—since they will always be the most vulnerable in any society—being exploited or mistreated by powerful men or powerful social norms.” Indeed, some of the stories reveal the worst in human nature. A final section, detailing his life since his diagnosis in chapters such as “I Forget the Name of This Chapter: On Memory,” wraps up the narrative with humor, candor, and reflection.
This is a man who has seen it all, and he sure does know how to tell a story.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780063096226
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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