GAME FACE

An eighth grade goalie plagued by anxiety both on and off the ice finds help and coping strategies.

Casting his record of miseries into accessible free verse poems and haiku, with occasional ventures into rhyme, Jonah Vanderbeek tracks his increasing tendency in the years since his mother’s sudden death to respond to stress by going stubbornly silent or exploding in rage. Jonah, who is cued as being of Dutch descent, also chronicles inner struggles with fear of failure so intense that at one point he throws up during an ice hockey game—then later comes close to quitting the sport out of guilt when his best friend collapses and is forced to give up his NHL dreams due to a heart condition. The discovery that his distant, repressive dad is actually struggling with an anxiety disorder so severe that he can’t work in an office or come to any of Jonah’s games is just one more dismal development. Timely if predictable help comes in the form of Rosamie Garcia, an improbably sensitive and tolerant Filipino classmate; a wise school counselor evocatively named Ms. Rogers; and Jonah’s own Oma—who steer him toward the realization that there are always helpers. By the climactic championship face-off, he’s found ways to keep “the alien / in my brain” at bay, so that win or lose “I’ll be okay. // I’ll be okay.”

An unvarnished problem-focused novel with occasional doses of quick ice hockey action.