A wish-fulfillment fantasy pleasingly complicated by real emotional journeys.
An undersized middle school football player inherits an NFL team.
When his father—whom Ryan’s never met and whose name he doesn’t even know—dies, he leaves Ryan the Dallas Cowboys. A confusing series of flashbacks and exposition about Ryan’s relationship with football sets the story up, including his mother’s initial refusal to let him play and the odd position he occupied on the team as a player so small that his coaches purposefully prevented him from experiencing the contact side of the sport. This rough beginning gives way to a character-driven story. Ryan battles urges to exploit his new status, with the help of a mother determined to teach him to be a good person and two wonderful best friends (a friendly giant of a teammate and a pretty, fantasy-football whiz) who like Ryan for himself, not because he’s the newly famous kid owner. But bullies on his team still target Ryan, and Ryan’s wicked stepmother schemes to snatch the Cowboys for her own son—the star player of the rival middle school’s team. When Ryan isn’t dealing with power plays from lawyers or the Cowboys’ feuding general manager and coach, he’s trying to earn a shot at quarterback; despite his not-spectacular arm, Ryan’s ability to read defense makes him a natural for a spread offense. All storylines culminate in a big game, and it’s a good one.
A wish-fulfillment fantasy pleasingly complicated by real emotional journeys. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-229379-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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