Love of the Game

Coy, John. Love of the Game.
This is the third in the 4 for 4 series that also includes: Top of the Order, Eyes on the Goal, and Take Your Best Shot.
Starting middle school has Jackson worried because he is also having to move into his mother's boyfriend's home. He already has a father; he doesn't need Ted, too. There are older students who are giving him a hard time, classes are difficult, and he is forced to be in a reading club. He has to take a food class, which is okay because there is a girl he likes in it. The one thing he looks forward to is football, but he is worried that his friend Diego won't go out for the team because his mother is afraid of injuries. His friend Gig is still concerned about his father in Afghanistan. Will all of these things get Jackson down, or will he be able to work everything out?
Strengths: This is a nice easy read for boys who like sports, even though there aren't as many descriptions of games. Readers of Rich Wallace will like these. I liked the book club and the shout out to Ritter's baseball books!
Weaknesses: Again with the bullies threatening swirlies and taking kids' lunch money. Sigh. I suppose it happens in some places.

Skead, Robert and Mike Simmel. Mighty Mike Bounces Back.
Mike has had epilepsy since he was two, and is on medication but still has seizures. When he was younger, they were so bad that his parents made him wear a bike helmet all the time! When he discovers basketball, if becomes his obsession. It's not enough to practice before and after school-- he wants to be on the team. With the help of his doctor and the patience of his teammates, he gets on the team. Even though he still has seizures (and sometimes has them at very inopportune moments), he is able to be a successful member of the team. Based on the real life experiences of Mike Simmel, who plays for the Harlem Wizards exhibition team.
Strengths: A short basketball book that also has a lot of information about epilepsy.
Weaknesses: A bit didactic, and the book would have benefitted greatly from better design, although the cover is good. The print is very tiny; since the book is so thin, I would have chosen a larger font!

Brief Job Update: It looks like I may be at one school next year, and it will hopefully be the one that I have been at for the last ten years (fifteen if you count volunteering!). This is, of course, marvelous good news, but next year could still be sad. The length of the day will probably be cut, and SSR could be a victim. The most important part of SSR for me is that I see ALL of the children in the building once a week, and they have an adult in their lives who has a vested interest in making sure that they have a book at all times. I try to get out to study halls to check, but SSR teachers see the the same group of students every day and can make sure.

There are a lot of teachers who are retiring even though they have a lot of good years left, in order to save the jobs of younger teachers. People will be moved. Students will have limited electives. We'll have cross country, but the fee will be $150. I have some runners who could barely afford $50. I saw my first cockroach in the building because of the custodial cuts.

*SIGH*

We will be grateful for what we have. And speaking of which, go congratulate Mother Reader on her Star Volunteer Award. Why is it that as conscientious, hard working adults, we still feel we are not worthy? I just won a GEM Award, and feel sort of like Mother Reader does!

Guy Friday-- Football

Barber, Ronde and Tiki. Goal Line.
Primarily written, as pointed out by Mr. Winchell in comments, by Paul Mantell, who should be allowed to write books under his own name!

Twins Ronde and Tiki are starting 8th grade and are very excited to start playing football again, but Ronde is disconcerted to find that his identical twin is 3 inches and many pounds heavier than he is. Suddenly, the team is not rooting for “the Barber twins” but just Tiki. Tiki also writes an essay for a contest and wins, forcing him to read the essay at an assembly. He is approached by the school newspaper to write an advice column, and keeping up with football, class work, and the column prove stressful. Another set of twin players from Haiti help the team, but make the Barbers worry about their worth. The Eagles have a chance to have an undefeated season with the return of Coach Wheeler, and might have a chance to go to the playoffs again, but not unless Tiki can get his priorites in order.
Strengths: I wish there were more sports series for boys. These are the perfect length and have just the right mix of sports and school problems. They do need a little more romance, though!Weaknesses: For some reason, even though these are based off the Barbers’ real lives, there’s always something I can’t quite believe. In this one, it is Tiki having to read his essay at assembly, and the sudden popularity of his advice column. Are there any middle school that even have school newspapers?


Tunis, John. All American. (Nota Bene: Published in 1942)
E ARC from Netgalley.com from Open Road Media.

Ronald is a student at a the private Academy and a star on the football team when an attempt to stop Meyer Goldman from making a touchdown results in Goldman being in the hospital with severe back injuries. Wracked by guilt, and increasingly irritated by the attitudes of the students and staff at Academy, Ronald transfers to Abraham Lincoln High School. The transition is tough-- people call him a “pretty boy” and cause him problems until he gets in a fist fight with the nasty Stacey and ends up in the hospital himself. After this, everyone is nicer and Ron plays on both the baseball and football teams. When the football team is invited to an intersectional game in the South, one of the players will not be able to go because the school does not allow Negroes to play. Ronald wants the team to refuse to go, and he has the support of his fellow players, but local businesmen who will lose money if the team does not go put pressure on his father and the fathers of the other players to encourage the team to play. In the end, the team does not bow to this pressure, but end up being uninvited in the South but invited to an intersectional in the North, so everyone is happy.
Strengths: Tunis (1889-1975) always does excellent sports descriptions, and we get football and baseball in this one. The cover alone makes the book worth buying. This is also a good historical description of the plight of African-Americans during this time period. It was fun to read about the fathers talking about the “big game of ‘16” and about Ronald’s lunch: scrambled eggs, potato chips, a piece of pie, bottle of milk and bread and butter, all for 27 cents. Probably considered well balanced, too!
Weaknesses: It was jarring to read “Negro” again and again, and I worry that this will offend readers who don’t know the historical background. Also, since this is from Open Road Media, it is only available as an E Book.

It's funny how small print is an indicator that a book is meant for older audiences. I looked at Caludia Gray's new Fateful, and just couldn't get into it because the print was too small AND it was about werewolves on the Titanic. Lots of people out there need two copies for their libraries, but I don't have the audience for this book this year. Will get this author's Balthazar, however, which comes out March 6. Another one was Hautman's What Boys Really Want, which is usually the kind of realistic fiction I adore, but again, small font (along with more mature subject matter) doomed it.

Another one I really wanted to like was House and Vaswani's Same Sun Here. From the Publisher: " A twelve-year-old Indian immigrant in New York City and a Kentucky coal miner's son become pen pals, and eventually best friends, through a series of revealing letters exploring such topics as environmental activism, immigration, and racism." Again, libraries where Naylor's Faith, Hope and Ivy June is popular will want to have this, but the letter format seemed anachronistic, and I see this being a hard sell at my library. Marjoleine Book Blog and Middle Grade Reads both adored this.

For the past week, I've been longing to reread books. Cleary's Fifteen. Edwards' Mandy. Most recently, Paige Dixon's May I Cross Your Golden River (1975). Someone mentioned it, I remember reading it, and there is not a copy to be found anywhere. This made me think about all of the books I have in my library that are rather aged-- the copy of Mandy (1974) that I have is a first edition. How long will it last? When will all of my copies of Stormbreaker fall to pieces and be irreplacable? I need to teach for 25 more years, so I will not be able to recommend the same books forever.

Second morning this week that gently sobbing seems required.

Guy Friday-- Playing With the Boys

No joke. Yesterday I had a group of boys who all checked out "pink" books because Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading suggested they should read about girls! The Greenwald title has been getting heavy circulation here!

Tigelaar, Liz. Playing with the Boys. (Pretty Tough #2)
Lucy, still recovering from the death of her mother, moves from Ohio to California with her father. Desperate to fit in and make friends, she tries out for the soccer team, but when she doesn't make it, the coach suggests that she try out for the football team as placekicker. She beats out everyone, including her new friend Benji, and is cautiously excited about it. She thinks the quarterback, Ryan, is cute, and is glad to be asked to parties by the cheerleaders. The down sides include having to lie to her father that she is a cheerleader, and putting up with the hazing from the boys, who are not at all happy to have a girl on the team. This is the sequel to Pretty Tough, which features Charlie, who befriends Lucy.
Strengths: Very much enjoyed these portraits of strong girls interested in sports. I thought the treatment was realistic and balanced. Sad that over 20 years after Dygard's Forward Pass, girls are still having trouble being on football teams. If we have great young women like Brianna Amat kicking winning goals AND being Homecoming queen, I think it's time that boys realize that girls can play football, too.
Weaknesses: The author is now apparently writing for the television show Once Upon a Time, so we might not see more by this author; Pretty Tough #3 and #4 are written by Keri Mikulski.

I've not been finding many good books for boys lately. *Sigh*. Warning about James Proimos' 12 things to do before you crash and burn : gratuitous f-bombs in many places. This is especially annoying, as Proimos' previous work is for much younger ages, and the book itself is a tiny little volume. It is not clever enough to sustain the obscenities.

Also checked out Patricia Miles' The Gods in Winter, hoping that there would be enough mythology in it for my readers in Riordan withdrawl, but the 1978 title has that odd, English style where I wondered if anything would ever happen. Just not going to work.

I had great fun with Frank Decaro's The Dead Celebrity Cookbook, but it would have been better if the descriptions of the actors included pictures of them, as well as the source of the recipes, which I imagine appeared in other cookbooks. Not appropriate or of interest for middle school students, but fun for me!

The Underdogs

Lupica, Mike. The Underdogs.
Will is a small but fast football player whose father was a high school football star until a tragic and career-ending knee injury. They live in Forbes, a small Pennsylvania town that has seen better days. The big employer in the area, a show company, closed years ago, and the town has never recovered. Now, they can't even afford the $10,000 to fund the local Pop Warner type football team on which Will was planning on playing. Luckily, Will won't give up and writes to New Balance shoes to see if they will sponsor the team... and they agree to. The only problem is that so many people are leaving the town that it's hard to get people to play. Many people move to Castle Rock to work in the bottled water plant there, and some kids even go there to play on the soccer team. Will manages to round up other kids to play... including Hannah Grayson, a girl who is an awesome kicker and bigger than Will. While she is allowed on the team, the other players take time to warm up to her. Obstacle after obstacle in thrown in the team's way, but they dig deep to make their town proud.
Strengths: Wow. I knew that Lupica was a great sports writer, but this... this should be the Newbery next year. The characters are all realistic and well-developed, with many surprising characteristics. Hannah was AWESOME, and her relationship with Will was exactly the sort of one I would want to write. Real equals, despite their differences. The plot, while slightly predictable, has enough twists and turns to keep me madly flipping the pages. The best part of this is the overwhelming sense of sadness that as to be overcome, and the inclusion of the town of Forbes as a character. I cried. Really. And I have to post this quote at my desk (page 22): "The ball's not round," he said. "It'll take some funny bounces on you. You still gotta pick it up and keep running."
Weaknesses: I didn't understand why the town was playing for the football team, so it seemed slightly unrealistic. And, not to spoil the book for anyone, but I didn't think for one minute that Will's team would not win the championship.

Okay, admittedly this hit me at a time where an underdog story went down really well. But still, every middle school library HAS to buy at least one copy of this one.

Problem Novels

Volponi, Paul. Crossing Lines.

Adonis likes hanging out with his football playing friends and the girl he would like to have as his girlfriend, Melody. When Melody and Adonis' sister, Jeannie, get involved in a Fashion Club, Adonis is uncomfortable because one of the very active members is Alan. The football players all think that Alan is gay, but it is more likely that Alan is transgendered. This doesn't really make a difference to the football players; they use every opportunity to give Alan a hard time. Adonis is uncomfortable with this. Through his sister, he has gotten to know Alan, who is always the soul of politeness and congeniality to Adonis. Adonis sticks up for Alan in small ways, and his teammates give him a hard time, especially when Alan starts wearing lipstick and dresses and answering to "Alana". When his "friends" plan too humiliate Alan publicly, Adonis has to decide whether to ignore them or to stand up for what is right and protect Alan.

Strengths: Volponi has such a magnificent touch with difficult issues. His Black and White is a brilliant book about race relations. The characters in Crossing Lines are all realistic and finely developed, from Adonis' dad, who is hugely homophobic but teaches Adonis to "play the game" about not telling people how he feels, to Alan's father, who is an Army recruiter tremendously embarrassed by his son. All through the book, I felt as uncomfortable as Adonis did, and was so glad to see that Adonis really does grow and learn to deal with difficult situations. So many facets of the difficulties of transgendered students are covered in a sympathetic way that this would be a great book for high school libraries.

Weaknesses: The football players are the ones who add the inappropriate vocabulary and references to sex to this story.

Peterson, Lois. Beyond Repair.

Cam is trying to keep his household running the way it did before his father was killed in a traffic accident, but it is difficult. His mother is tired and his younger sister requires a lot of his time. When a strange man shows up at his house, he finds out that it is the man responsible for the death of his father. This man wants to help out; shovel snow, do the sorts of things for the family that their father can no longer do. This freaks Cam out, and he needs to find a way to help that man understand that the family needs to get on by themselves, and that the man also needs to get on with his life.

Strengths: My public library has gotten a lot of the Orca Current books recently, which I was glad to see. They are meant for reluctant readers, and have high school aged stories appropriate for struggling middle school readers. The writing, while easy to read, is usually compelling and something that a subset of my students (those who like Bluford but want to move on to topics beyond the inner city) really need.
Weaknesses: I expected this to be more of a mystery, but the bulk of the plot centers around the characters moving on after the death. Not a bad thing, just not what I expected.