A realistic, convincing, and moving debut portrait of grief and friendship with a basketball subtext.
Fourteen-year-old Sam’s life disintegrates when her best friend unexpectedly dies.
Sam and Reagan have “been attached at the hip since” they “reached for the same bouncy ball in kindergarten.” They’re eager to start high school and try out for basketball together. When Reagan’s heart stops during a pickup game, a stunned Sam blames herself. A “zombie” during Reagan’s funeral, Sam withdraws, surrounded everywhere by reminders of Reagan. Unable to manage without her friend, Sam’s lost at school, and her grades dip drastically. Unwilling to play basketball without Reagan, Sam stops training and opts to not try out for the basketball team. Eschewing support from her parents, siblings, and schoolmates, Sam gradually realizes she may just have followed Reagan rather than making her own way. Desperate to talk to her deceased friend, Sam’s amazed when an incorporeal Reagan vocally intervenes, urging Sam to resume training, begin studying, try out for basketball, and engage with new friends. Buoyed by this contact with Reagan, Sam begins rebuilding a life without her friend. Stokes’ evocation of Sam’s crushing grief is effective; even readers will find themselves feeling claustrophobic in Sam’s head. Sam’s vulnerable, genuine first-person voice lends gravitas to her journey from debilitating loss to eventual emergence as a stronger “Sam-I-am.” Sam and Reagan present white, as does their small New Hampshire town.
A realistic, convincing, and moving debut portrait of grief and friendship with a basketball subtext. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0674-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yellow Jacket
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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