1 FOR ALL

An eighth grade basketball player tries to turn around a losing season while wrestling with his worst opponent—his own ego—in this novel.

J.J. Pickett, captain and top scorer of the Traverse Middle School Musketeers basketball team, thinks the so-far winless season will go down the drain when the team’s 6-foot-2 center, Mike Belcher, gets an ankle injury and the coach abruptly quits. These disappointments come on top of other stresses that J.J. faces, including family tensions caused by his dad’s slumping contracting business; competition with his hated rival, Belcher, for the attention of classmate Anita Garcia; and a general, simmering 13-year-old angst. J.J. and his teammates are dubious when Mr. Gumble, the school’s unprepossessing custodian, takes over as coach. But the janitor turns out to be a great mentor who whips the team into shape with grueling line-running drills; teaches the players a scrappy, fast-break game featuring a full-court trap press defense to force adversaries into turnovers; and institutes the corny but stirring rallying cry “All for one, and one for all!” The Musketeers start clawing their way back against bigger teams, but J.J.’s berserk competitiveness, which channels his unhappiness with the world against his opponents, gets him benched, and he’s forced to do so some soul-searching about his attitude. When Mr. Gumble is replaced by Belcher’s jerk of an uncle, J.J. has to figure out a way to restore the team’s order, one that may require him to swallow his pride. McCollum’s energetic tale probes themes of self-awareness and self-restraint, team spiritedness, and players’ love of the game. The narrative features sharply drawn characters, pungent schoolyard dialogue—“You’ve got all the class of a zit, Belchbreath”—and plenty of vigorous play-by-play to hold young basketball fans’ interest. Meanwhile, the author manages to get inside J.J.’s head with prose that’s Hemingway-esque in its spare but penetrating directness: “J.J. had a face that looked younger than he liked. He wanted a hawk’s face, something sharp and fierce. A hawk’s yellow eyes would be cool, too, he thought. He was too small and looked too harmless for what he wanted to be.” The result is an absorbing and perceptive tween-age adventure with considerable literary flair.

A crackerjack sports yarn that conveys youthful psychology in a way that feels authentic.