THE TRACK TRAINING DIARY OF A NOT-SO-FAST SKINNY KID

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THE TRACK TRAINING DIARY OF A NOT-SO-FAST SKINNY KID

Name: THE TRACK TRAINING DIARY OF A NOT-SO-FAST SKINNY KID
Author: Tracie Choates
ISBN: 978-1-5374-8005-3

by Tracie Choates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2016

A promising YA debut, despite a few weak spots in characterization.

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In Choates’ (Playing the Game as a Man!, 2007) first YA novel, a young man barely survives middle school challenges on and off the track while learning life lessons.

Jack Vandergriff is determined to make a name for himself in this year’s yearbook, and he decides that joining the track team is just the ticket. He masks his insecurities with bravado, but he learns on the very first day of track tryouts that he’s totally inept; amazingly, however, he makes the team. During track season, it always seems like he’s taking one stride forward for every two strides back, but he persists. He’s also dogged by his annoying little sister, Abby, who always carries a camera, and his (supposedly) best friend, Broc, who’s a photographer for the yearbook; they both catch him in embarrassing photos, and Broc gleefully shows his pictures to the whole school. As Jack becomes a laughingstock, his longtime friend, Grace, is his only comfort, aside from his supportive but largely clueless parents. But he slowly climbs out of this hole to challenge Broc. Along the way, he learns that his “biggest and toughest opponent wasn’t the other runners. It was me.” Choates offers a believable protagonist in Jack as a kind of middle school Everykid: somewhat nerdy, painfully insecure, needing to belong where it counts, and not above desperate lying. Readers may find it a stretch, though, that Jack’s lifelong best friend could turn on him for relatively flimsy reasons, merely for the purposes of plot complication. However, Choates, a former high school runner herself who now competes in marathons, does make the races convincing, ably portraying the outer pain and inner torment they cause. In the end, she shows that Jack will enter eighth grade humbler and wiser.

A promising YA debut, despite a few weak spots in characterization.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5374-8005-3

Page Count: 222

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

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GOING SOLO

by Roald Dahl illustrated by Quentin Blake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1986

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A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986

ISBN: 0142413836

Page Count: 209

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
<i>MONA LISA</i> AND THE OTHERS
by Alice Harman ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

- BOOK REVIEW
ROALD DAHL SHAPES
developed by Roald Dahl ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

- BOOK REVIEW
ROALD DAHL WORDS
developed by Roald Dahl ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

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TIES THAT BIND, TIES THAT BREAK

by Lensey Namioka ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1999

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Namioka (Den of the White Fox, 1997, etc.) offers readers a glimpse of the ritual of foot-binding, and a surprising heroine whose life is determined by her rejection of that ritual. Ailin is spirited—her family thinks uncontrollable—even at age five, in her family’s compound in China in 1911, she doesn’t want to have her feet bound, especially after Second Sister shows Ailin her own bound feet and tells her how much it hurts. Ailin can see already how bound feet will restrict her movements, and prevent her from running and playing. Her father takes the revolutionary step of permitting her to leave her feet alone, even though the family of Ailin’s betrothed then breaks off the engagement. Ailin goes to the missionary school and learns English; when her father dies and her uncle cuts off funds for tuition, she leaves her family to become a nanny for an American missionary couple’s children. She learns all the daily household chores that were done by servants in her own home, and finds herself, painfully, cut off from her own culture and separate from the Americans. At 16, she decides to go with the missionaries when they return to San Francisco, where she meets and marries another Chinese immigrant who starts his own restaurant. The metaphor of things bound and unbound is a ribbon winding through this vivid narrative; the story moves swiftly, while Ailin is a brave and engaging heroine whose difficult choices reflect her time and her gender. (Fiction. 9-14)