A young football fan meets his idol and watches him triumph in the big game. Billy and his dad ride the train from Baltimore to New York to see the championship game between the Colts and the Giants. In flashback, Billy remembers a day, earlier in the year, when his friend Tommy came to him with a big surprise: Billy’s hero, Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas, lives not far away! They visit the friendly Unitas, who throws the ball with them and offers some advice. Back at the big game, Billy and Dad are on tenterhooks as the score seesaws back and forth before a series of passes by Unitas secures victory for the Colts in overtime. This substantial sports story for middle-elementary grades focuses on a deserving former star but is hampered by stilted narration: “ ‘He got the Colts back into a position to win the game,’ I said with great admiration.” O’Leary’s acrylic paintings have a soft focus that gives them a proper period feel. A compact Unitas bio and bibliography are included. (Picture book. 8-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8118-5661-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Ohkwa'ri and his twin sister, Otsi:stia, 11, are late-15th century Mohawks living in what would become New York State. Both are exemplary young people: He is brave, kind, and respectful of his elders, and she is gentle and wise beyond her years. One day Ohkwa'ri hears an older youth, Grabber, and his cronies planning to raid a nearby Abenaki village, in violation of the Great League of Peace to which all the Iroquois Nations have been committed for decades. When Ohkwa'ri reports what he has heard to the tribal elders he makes a deadly enemy of Grabber. Grabber's opportunity for revenge comes when the entire tribe gathers for the great game of Tekwaarathon (later, lacrosse). Ohkwa'ri knows that he will be in great danger during the long day of play and will have to use all his wits and skills to save himself and his honor. Bruchac (Between Earth and Sky, p. 445, etc.) saturates his novel with suspense, generating an exciting story that also offers an in-depth look at Native American life centuries ago. The book also offers excellent insights into the powerful role of women in what most readers will presume was a male-dominated society. Thoroughly researched; beautifully written. (Fiction. 8- 11)
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0140385045
Page Count: 155
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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