Tessa’s ferocious competitiveness is appealing, though her ambivalence about football gives the lie to the...
Whether a girl might want to play football is the thread that holds together this dual narrative of a sports novel and a budding romance, told in alternating voices by the two sweethearts.
Eighth-grader Tessa is a competitive cross-country runner, showing impressive speed and assured of a place on that team when she heads to high school next fall. At 14, she is attracted to Caleb, a boy she regularly plays flag football with. Pickup games here and there slowly develop into a sweet first courtship. Over the summer, Caleb endures dangerous but routine hazing as he casually follows in his older brother's footsteps, while Tessa is pulled into her mother's campaign for mayor. Partly in rebellion and partly for attention, Tessa announces in a press interview that she plans to go out for football. Caleb's chapters show him wrestling with his ideas about his own future as well as his growing interest in Tessa. Outwardly she seems committed to football, but uncertainty comes through in her chapters as she encounters the brutal physicality of football camp. Both narratives are straightforward and readable. Tessa is shown as white on the cover; Caleb also reads as white. While the narrative twice states that more than 1,600 girls actually play football in high school, it is oddly ambiguous about Tessa's future in the sport.
Tessa’s ferocious competitiveness is appealing, though her ambivalence about football gives the lie to the determined-looking girl on the cover. (Fiction. 11-15)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-74183-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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