Thoughtfully portrays a boy who’s balancing hoop dreams and emotional maturity to achieve impressive ends.
Being the best on the court doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot to learn about playing the game of life.
Being a top-ranked player comes with a lot of new pressures for 14-year-old basketball phenom Kofi Douglass. Though their Milwaukee community has suffered a recent tragic loss, Kofi and his mother are also still reeling from the day his father was arrested seven years ago—and basketball has become a complicated way of coping. Through all the challenges, Kofi has a staunch best friend in Mecca, but even she’s beginning to recognize how he’s started to let basketball and his ego get in his own way. Meanwhile, former friend (now bitter rival) Ripp Ransom will take advantage of any misstep to get ahead of Kofi, leading to some action-packed showdowns on the court. These scenes, coupled with flashbacks that contextualize Kofi’s story, make for a compelling sports drama with a lot of heart. In this stand-alone companion to Shot Clock (2022), the authors believably frame Kofi’s slow path toward maturity on and off the court, presenting it as the real key to his overall success. Ballplayers will appreciate the hoops details, playful slang, and healthy dose of trash talk, while the images of healing from loss and unfairness will be accessible and refreshing for any readers. The cast members predominantly read Black.
Thoughtfully portrays a boy who’s balancing hoop dreams and emotional maturity to achieve impressive ends. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780063069640
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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