24 September 2013, Disney Hyperion
E ARC from Netgalley.com
Theo, who has gotten very tall over the summer and has been
approached to be on the basketball team, is taunted with cries of “Bigfoot” and
“Sasquatch” during one game, but it is the comment about his skin color that
makes him pay attention. He is one of a few black kids at Orangetree Middle
School in Palisades Park, and is sensitive about it. His best friend, Brian, is
Jewish, and is on the Brain Train academic challenge team with him. Theo’s
mother has passed away, and his father, a police officer, is very concerned
about keeping Theo on the straight and narrow. Theo tries to improve his
basketball skills by joining in pick up games of basketball, but because he is
not very good, these do not go well. He meets “Crazy Girl”, Rain, and watches
as she is accosting by a very violent cousin. Theo’s poser cousin, Gavin, who
lives with his grandmother while his mother is providing wells in Africa, makes
a demo CD of his music, which irritates Theo by being good. Theo struggles both
with basketball, where his coach is trying to use his height as the center of
the team’s strategy, and on the Brain Train, where his lack of preparation is
letting his perfectly multicultural team down (other members are a white girl,
a Vietnamese boy, and a Hispanic boy). Things become difficult when someone has
stolen Gavin’s CD from Theo and sold the song to a band, whose performance of
the song goes viral. Theo figures out this mystery, as well as a mystery
involving Rain, and things go fairly well for him.
Strengths: I liked this one far more than I thought I would,
because it involved a lot of good details that I have not found in middle grade
literature. Theo talks about race with his father, and there is even a family
“Because I’m Black” jar, to which Theo
must contribute if he uses his race as an excuse. Rain is a great spunky
character. There are some great lines, like the one about the Brain Train
coach, Mr. Jacobsen: “Rumor had it that he had taught at a famous university
but he’d accidentally killed a student during a failed time-travel experiment.”
(Page 93). Lots of good basketball details, of course!
Weaknesses: The multicultural aspect of the team seemed a
little unrealistic, although Theo does describe his neighborhood as a
multicultural paradise, so maybe it reflects reality. I also don’t believe that
any 6th graders read Dumas’ Three Musketeers—it took me two weeks to
read that. Dense.
It's got a fantastic title, too!
ReplyDelete(Yes, Dumas. Perhaps they read the Graphic Novel? GNs of the classics seem all the rage nowadays!)