The boys of team Achukma score with veteran readers and recruits alike. (Fiction. 12-16)
An all-Indian basketball team shoots for a regional summer league championship, but “anti-Indian feelings” and opposing teams threaten to steal it away.
Choctaw narrator Bobby, his “best friend, Cherokee Johnny,” and Coach Robison join old faces and meet new ones in the fourth installment of Tingle’s (Choctaw) No Name series. The Monday following a season-ending loss in the high school basketball district title game, Coach Robison announces he will lead a summer team comprised of Native Nations’ players. Though the Panthers’ non-Native players feel disappointed at first, Coach offers them the opportunity to scrimmage during tryouts, and everyone posts up. Once the all-Indian team is set, the boys must trust each other and share the spotlight to succeed. As long as they “play clean, play hard, and nobody gets hurt,” Bobby and team Achukma will learn that lessons acquired on court also apply to life. Readers who enjoy a varied pace will notice both the intentional unhurriedness of a full court press and the thrilling speed of a fast break. And while basketball action and lingo abound, readers unfamiliar with the sport won’t be left sitting on the bench. Though dramatic threads of family alcoholism, domestic violence, and bullying introduced in previous stories are mentioned, they take second team to the overarching stand-alone theme of “always trying to do what’s right.”
The boys of team Achukma score with veteran readers and recruits alike. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-939053-19-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: 7th Generation
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
A smart, timely outing.
Two teens connect through a mysterious podcast in this sophomore effort by British author Oseman (Solitaire, 2015).
Frances Janvier is a 17-year-old British-Ethiopian head girl who is so driven to get into Cambridge that she mostly forgoes friendships for schoolwork. Her only self-indulgence is listening to and creating fan art for the podcast Universe City, “a…show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university.” Aled Last is a quiet white boy who identifies as “partly asexual.” When Frances discovers that Aled is the secret creator of Universe City, the two embark on a passionate, platonic relationship based on their joint love of pop culture. Their bond is complicated by Aled’s controlling mother and by Frances’ previous crush on Aled’s twin sister, Carys, who ran away last year and disappeared. When Aled’s identity is accidently leaked to the Universe City fandom, he severs his relationship with Frances, leaving her questioning her Cambridge goals and determined to win back his affection, no matter what the cost. Frances’ narration is keenly intelligent; she takes mordant pleasure in using an Indian friend’s ID to get into a club despite the fact they look nothing alike: “Gotta love white people.” Though the social-media–suffused plot occasionally lags, the main characters’ realistic relationship accurately depicts current issues of gender, race, and class.
A smart, timely outing. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-233571-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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