An action-packed, heartfelt story that elucidates the importance of mental health care to young athletes.
Major league baseball player Stroman’s semiautobiographical series starter follows a talented young athlete who learns to handle anxiety on and off the field.
It’s the summer before middle school, and Marcus—who shares a name with the book’s author—is enjoying participating in practice camps for both baseball and basketball until his baseball coach hits the team with an announcement: The players must undergo an “assessment” to earn a spot on the spring team. Meanwhile, though his parents’ divorce is amicable—even as they deal with the strict schedules and expenses required for elite athletics—the separation of their households adds even more pressure for a kid already striving for perfection. With his assessment looming, small things find their ways under Marcus’ skin more easily, leading his perceptive mom to schedule him a visit with a mental health coach who teaches him to cope with the stress of high expectations. While not everything depicted here happened to Stroman, he shares much with his earnest protagonist, like his determination and uncertainties. The author’s note works to destigmatize and normalize mental health care. Practice and game-play details and an entertaining if not particularly deeply developed cast of secondary characters are assets to the pacing. Hints in the text suggest that Marcus, like the author (the son of a Puerto Rican mother and Black father), is biracial.
An action-packed, heartfelt story that elucidates the importance of mental health care to young athletes. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781665916141
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message.
Two boys equally blessed with both talent and ego vie for supremacy in their school’s annual “creative storytelling competition.”
J is “by far the best artist in the entire fifth grade”; K has “become known as the best writer in the entire fifth grade.” Naturally, each one is determined to crush it in The Contest, and each decides an illustrated story is the way to go. The competitive boys try to undermine one another by passing along fake tips for success, each hoping to destroy his opponent’s story. K advises J to “write what you DON’T know” and to use sixth-person narration. “J’s Secrets to Drawing Really Good” are just as catastrophic and include drawing with your nondominant hand and inserting mistakes to keep readers engaged. Creative hijinks ensue. Craft and Alexander have become known on social media for the jocular trash talk they heap on each other; J and K are their fictional child avatars. As an internet bit doled out in small doses, their frenemy-ship is amusing; as a sustained story about storytelling, it’s thin on both character and plot development. Authorial interjections exhort readers to look up 75-cent vocabulary, often used in barbs directed at each other; the latter feel like in-jokes more than playful attempts to engage young readers. Kids may enjoy spotting references to popular children’s authors among the characters’ names, and budding authors and illustrators will benefit from the advice. J and K are both Black; their classmates and teachers are racially diverse.
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780316582681
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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