Uneven plotting elevated by football nuance—on and off the field.
A San Antonio middle school football player grapples with his changing relationship with football in the face of fear and the consequences of concussion.
After a nasty hit, white wide receiver Clay Hollis starts to hold back, missing catches out of fear of getting hit. It’s embarrassing, and he doesn’t want to let down his best friend and quarterback, David Guerrero, or his white coach, who played with the 1990s-era Cowboys. The hit has him thinking about his mother’s research into concussions—she’s a football fanatic too, but she doesn’t want her son’s brain injured. Coach Coop himself took so many hits that he can be forgetful—and the episodes are happening more frequently. Clay teams up with team-manager Maddie, David’s football-guru younger sister, to get Coach Coop an iPhone, set up both reminders and the Waze app for when he gets lost, and help cover up his decline so he can have one last championship run with his team before being honored during the Thanksgiving Day Cowboys game. Racial descriptors show up mostly in naming conventions (David and his family are probably Latinx); Alamo hero-worship strikes a bit of an off note. While Clay’s fears seem sometimes to be handled too easily and the coach’s storyline grows repetitive, the play descriptions are top-notch, and the ending’s a poignant surprise.
Uneven plotting elevated by football nuance—on and off the field. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-17280-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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
Brava!
From award winner Telgemeier (Smile, 2010), a pitch-perfect graphic novel portrayal of a middle school musical, adroitly capturing the drama both on and offstage.
Seventh-grader Callie Marin is over-the-moon to be on stage crew again this year for Eucalyptus Middle School’s production of Moon over Mississippi. Callie's just getting over popular baseball jock and eighth-grader Greg, who crushed her when he left Callie to return to his girlfriend, Bonnie, the stuck-up star of the play. Callie's healing heart is quickly captured by Justin and Jesse Mendocino, the two very cute twins who are working on the play with her. Equally determined to make the best sets possible with a shoestring budget and to get one of the Mendocino boys to notice her, the immensely likable Callie will find this to be an extremely drama-filled experience indeed. The palpably engaging and whip-smart characterization ensures that the charisma and camaraderie run high among those working on the production. When Greg snubs Callie in the halls and misses her reference to Guys and Dolls, one of her friends assuredly tells her, "Don't worry, Cal. We’re the cool kids….He's the dork." With the clear, stylish art, the strongly appealing characters and just the right pinch of drama, this book will undoubtedly make readers stand up and cheer.
Brava! (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-32698-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
SEEN & HEARD
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