Wallace flattens the sophomore jinx in this taut, present-tense tale of an underdog high-school soccer team battling internal dissension, set in the same Pennsylvania town as his strong debut, Wrestling Sturbridge (1996). Friends and soccer nuts since grade school, Barry and Joey bring new life to a team that was 2-11-1 last year, but their relationship is undergoing a power shift. Joey's need to dominate is getting on Barry's nerves, on the field—where his reluctance to pass the ball is costing games—and off: He cuts in on Barry's pursuit of Shannon, a luscious schoolmate. The more the buddies drift apart, though, the harder Joey plays, and through a series of exciting games he takes the team to a climactic try at the local league championship. Meanwhile, Barry arranges to be alone with Shannon at a party, and Joey retaliates by getting him fired from the inn where they both work. The friends' rift is healed by an exchange of knuckles and twin attacks of common sense. Wallace's teenage characters—all involved in athletics—are drawn from life and mostly likable; adults stay in the background, but Barry enjoys an unusually close relationship with his savvy college-age brother, Tommy, a font of good advice. Thanks in part to occasional descriptive asides, Sturbridge takes on a distinctive character, too: It's a small, ethnically diverse, sports-focused town, limited in its opportunities but not as confining as it seemed in the previous book. Engrossing fare. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-88670-2
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
The best day of Michael Mackenzie's life becomes the worst when the bullet he exuberantly fires into the air during his 17th birthday party comes down a mile away and kills a man. When he hears the story on the radio, the news hits him like a lightning bolt. Numbly following the advice of his best friend, Joe, he buries the rifle and tries, without much success, to get on with life. So does the victim's 15-year-old daughter, Jenna, who had been present when the bullet struck. Switching between Michael's point-of-view and Jenna's, McDonald (Comfort Creek, 1996) sends the two teenagers dancing slowly toward each other, using mutual acquaintances, chance meetings at parties and the community pool, and glimpses at a distance. Both go through parallel phases of denial, both are tortured by remorse, exhibit behavior changes, and experience strange dreams; both eventually find ways to ease their grief and guilt. When the police close in, Joe takes the blame, giving Michael the nerve to confess. In the final chapter, McDonald shifts to present tense and brings Michael and Jenna to a cathartic meeting under a huge sycamore said in local Lenape legend to be a place of healing—an elaborate and, considering the suburban setting and familiar contemporary characters, awkward graft in this deliberately paced but deeply felt drama. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-32309-3
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books.
In a meditative interracial love story with a wrenching climactic twist, Woodson (The House You Pass on the Way, 1997, etc.) offers an appealing pair of teenagers and plenty of intellectual grist, before ending her story with a senseless act of violence.
Jeremiah and Elisha bond from the moment they collide in the hall of their Manhattan prep school: He’s the only child of celebrity parents; she’s the youngest by ten years in a large family. Not only sharply sensitive to the reactions of those around them, Ellie and Miah also discover depths and complexities in their own intense feelings that connect clearly to their experiences, their social environment, and their own characters. In quiet conversations and encounters, Woodson perceptively explores varieties of love, trust, and friendship, as she develops well-articulated histories for both families. Suddenly Miah, forgetting his father’s warning never to be seen running in a white neighborhood, exuberantly dashes into a park and is shot down by police. The parting thought that, willy-nilly, time moves on will be a colder comfort for stunned readers than it evidently is for Ellie.
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23112-9
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
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