It seems to be an embarrassment of riches to be, say, one of the best basketball players in history and also write tightly entertaining novels for kids, but there you have Abdul-Jabbar. Surely Obstfeld added polish and framing, but this obviously is a work of someone intimate with sports and, by extension, how sports can serve as metaphor for a way of being in the world. Here, newly tall eighth-grader Theo Rollins is trying to find his way between the brainiacs and the basketball players. Along the way, he meets Rain—aka Crazy Girl—a sort of “girl with the dragon tattoo” minus the heaviest baggage. Characters, both friend and foe, feel real; there is talk of abandonment as well as serious comments about the skewed vision Americans have of Islam. The deepest running narrative pivots around sports, but the story has much to give. Theo’s cousin’s taxonomy of basketball players is broadly applicable: There are the happy-go-lucky, the self-conscious and “those who never want the game to be over, because each minute is like living on some planet where you got no problems....[They are], for that brief time, in a place where everything they thought or did mattered.” Fearless, caring sports fiction. (Fiction. 8-12)
THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS
Abrams, Amir Dafina/Kensington (364 pp.) $9.95 paper | $8.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-7582-7357-4 978-0-7582-7529-5 e-book Drama reigns supreme in suburban New Jersey. Senior basketballer Antonio “Tone” Lopez can have any girl he wants. They throw themselves at his feet at school and sext him hot messages and pics at night. He can have anyone he wants, and he knows it. And he does. The only one he can’t have is Miesha, the beautiful, stone-cold new girl in town from Brooklyn, who, of course, becomes the object of his affection. Tension sparks the moment she walks into the school. Every other girl is jealous of her beauty, and the drama escalates when Tone shows an interest in her. Threats are made. Punches are thrown. Weaves are torn—and more. Abrams’ latest is good, raunchy fun. There’s little actual profanity spoken by the characters, but the sex trash talk runs rampant. What’s important, however, is that Tone and Miesha aren’t just stereotypes, and Abrams works hard to humanize them with their back stories and dreams. But what teen readers will love the most are the full-on catfights, trash talk and sizzling romance. Good, dirty fun. (Romance. 15 & up)
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15 june 2013
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children ’s
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teen
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CANARY
Alpine, Rachele Medallion Press (288 pp.) $9.99 paper | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-60542-587-0 In an engrossing, carefully unfolding drama, sophomore Kate Franklin adjusts to a new school, a powerful set of friends and a family that is falling apart. After their mother’s death two years earlier, Kate and Brett’s father threw himself into his work. Now hired to coach the basketball team at an elite prep school, he decrees that his children will transfer to Beacon from their public high school. Kate falls in easily with the popular crowd, helped, perhaps, by their interest in her father’s prestigious position. Despite her enthusiasm about her new friends and boyfriend, Jack, readers can see her discomfort when Jack cheats off her homework or pressures her for sex and when her friends bully and insult her brother. When Brett announces his decision to enlist in the Army, Kate is devastated, but the popular crowd has no patience for her becoming sad and withdrawn. The incidents that lead to Kate’s friends turning on her, including a sexual assault, are realistically and painfully drawn. Chapters begin with poems and essays of varying quality, although as Kate never talks about writing in her narration, the revelation late in the book that these pieces come from her own private blog is somewhat unconvincing. Overall, a sophisticated, evocative portrait of a teen girl finding her place among peers and family. (Fiction. 14-18)
MACADOO OF THE MAURY RIVER
Amateau, Gigi Candlewick (192 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-3766-8
This slender novel follows the life of a Belgian draft horse from his yearling days in a pasture in Alberta through several owners until he finds his true calling as a therapeutic and vaulting horse at a riding center in Virginia. Depressed and certain that there is no place for draft horses in the world anymore, his sire bites the tip off one of his ears; the resulting defect (inexplicably) sends him to a “kill” auction instead of one for valuable purebreds. A man named John Macadoo saves him from slaughter and takes him to Virginia, where he becomes the companion of a lonely boy. Another forced sale several years later takes him to the Maury River Stables, where he meets a young girl named Claire and an old Appaloosa named Chancey, both characters from the companion book, Chancey of the Maury River (2008). As with the previous book, overly formal and at times overwrought language mars the readability.
kirkus.com
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