In the opener of a four-book series about kids in the baseball-loving town of Walton, 12-year-old Jack Callahan struggles to square his personal sorrows with his deep love of the game.
Gifted baseball player Jack and buddy Gus, whose family roots in the Dominican Republic partly inform his aspiration to the Little League championships in Williamsport, have played since T-ball. Jack’s sudden announcement on tryout day that he won’t be playing this season angers Gus and bewilders his own parents. But the town’s softball superstar, classmate Cassie, steps up to offer simple, straightforward friendship to Jack. She persuades Jack to keep connected with the game by helping her dad coach her team. A new friendship with another classmate, Teddy, allows Jack to reveal that he blames himself for his risk-taking older brother’s accidental death the summer before. Adults are admirable: Coaches emphasize sportsmanship; parents set aside their own troubles to support their children. The baseball narrative is terrific—Lupica recaps these fictional games with brisk, exciting clarity. The friendship story is solid, kind and reassuring, and even if most of the young characters demonstrate unlikely maturity rather than depth, readers will only notice the qualities that are best in them.
A lovely nod to Derek Jeter rounds out a winner of a sports novel. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0995-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A star 12-year-old quarterback has a championship to win, a developing family tragedy to cope with, and a life-changing decision to make.
Barely disguising the autobiographical elements contained here in the wake of his own diagnosis of ALS, former Atlanta Falcons player Green places his protagonist, Ben Redd, in a football family and on an upstate New York team coached by his dad and two older brothers—all former gridiron stars themselves. Ben’s anticipation as he looks forward to a season that will be capped by a game against archrival Penn Yan battles with his terror as he watches his father’s NFL injuries come home to roost in slurred speech, loss of physical coordination, and, eventually, a frantic trip to the hospital for an emergency tracheotomy. But as Ben’s parents, both iron willed, clash over whether he should be allowed to follow the family career path (and one of his brothers even announces that none of his kids will ever play), the sport’s allure comes through in a series of exciting clashes, with Ben and wonderfully hard-nosed new teammate, Thea Jean, leading the on-field heroics on the way to a last-yard, smash-mouth finale that leaves him dazed and exultant, with a broken finger, a probable concussion…and a choice of futures. Though the cast is mostly male and mostly White, between them, Thea and Ben’s mom add strong female representation.
An intense referendum on football’s dangers and glories. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-248595-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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