Sports are a metaphor for life in Sweeney’s outing (Spirit Window, 1998, etc.) where naïveté and trust meet up with unbridled ambition. Expectations are high for Corey’s basketball team to win the title, but they need one more player in their starting line-up. Noah is new, from Georgia and suspected of racism by the black players. He’s got such a good outside shot that Corey swings the whole team—except best friend Luke—into voting him in. High-school sports throughout the country vary somewhat, but few coaches would be so willing to pass such control to players, and this coach is one smart cookie. Gulp that implausibility and the access players have at half-time to kids not on the team and you’re off. There’s just enough play-by-play basketball to satisfy sports enthusiasts, but the emphasis is on Corey’s education via the dirty work Noah is willing to dish out to not only play, but also to play first string and his preferred position, center. Corey has two sisters, one younger, vulnerable, and wise beyond her years, the other shortly to be married, and totally self-centered, but not as Machiavellian as Noah. The parents, as in most YA novels, are mostly invisible, and the romantic entanglements serve to complicate the friction surrounding who plays and who doesn’t, but never demand the spotlight. Characters are appealing and less one-dimensional than in typical sports fare. Everything happens quickly and the message is valuable, if occasionally less than subtle. Kids who have played on teams will enjoy exploring the complexities of team dynamics, and basketball enthusiasts will simply lap this one up. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-890817-54-6
Page Count: 225
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
When Clara Luna, 14, visits rural Mexico for the summer to visit the paternal grandparents she has never met, she cannot know her trip will involve an emotional and spiritual journey into her family’s past and a deep connection to a rich heritage of which she was barely aware. Long estranged from his parents, Clara’s father had entered the U.S. illegally years before, subsequently becoming a successful business owner who never spoke about what he left behind. Clara’s journey into her grandmother’s history (told in alternating chapters with Clara’s own first-person narrative) and her discovery that she, like her grandmother and ancestors, has a gift for healing, awakens her to the simple, mystical joys of a rural lifestyle she comes to love and wholly embrace. Painfully aware of not fitting into suburban teen life in her native Maryland, Clara awakens to feeling alive in Mexico and realizes a sweet first love with Pedro, a charming goat herder. Beautifully written, this is filled with evocative language that is rich in imagery and nuance and speaks to the connections that bind us all. Add a thrilling adventure and all the makings of an entrancing read are here. (glossaries) (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-73343-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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