Nothing but net.
Practice makes perfect, or at least better—both in basketball and in friendship.
Lori may be only good enough on the boards to play in her fourth grade team’s informal “fifth quarter” warmups, but her determination to improve burns steadily enough to prompt signing up for both youth league and an intensive girls basketball camp at the local college. While chronicling plenty of realistically aggressive game and practice action in the tight but cleanly drawn panels, Dawson hands his protagonist a different sort of challenge too, as Lori discovers that Elyse, a likewise unskilled teammate she had pegged as a friend stealer, is actually an admirer who has been inspired by Lori’s focus. In a thematically similar side plot, Lori’s own mom nervously announces that she’s going to run for town council. By the time fifth grade tryouts roll around, the work both girls have put into their games and their relationship bears fruit—and if the political campaign doesn’t end so happily, still Lori expresses stout pride that her mom had the courage to try. That sentiment along with a more experienced player’s “If you want to win you can’t be scared you’ll lose” make up the main message in this first of a planned duology. The bright, saturated color palette and characters’ expressive faces complement this engaging, fast-paced story. Racially ambiguous Lori and her parents have black hair and light skin; the cast is visibly diverse.
Nothing but net. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-24418-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable.
Six New Jersey 12-year-olds separated by decades race to ensure the “good guys” win World War II in this middle-grade work by the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and her brother, a children's author and journalist.
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlled dystopia of Westfallen? This propulsive thriller includes well-paced cuts between times that keep the pages turning. Like most people in their small New Jersey town, Alice, Artie, and Frances are white. In 1944, Lawrence, who’s Black, endures bigotry; in the U.S.A. of 2023, Henry’s biracial (white and Black) identity and Lukas’ Jewish one are unremarkable, but in Westfallen, Henry’s a “mischling” doing “work-learning,” and Lukas is a menial laborer. Alice’s and Henry’s dual first-person narration zooms in on the adventure, but readers who pull back may find themselves deeply uneasy with the summary consideration paid to the real-life fates of European Jews and disabled people. The cliffhanger ending will have them hoping for more thoughtful treatment in sequels to come.
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable. (Science fiction/thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665950817
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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