What’s behind the “ nunya bidness door”? And is that a gun sticking out from Grandpop’s waistband? Reynolds’ middle-grade debut meanders like the best kind of summer vacation but never loses sense of its throughline. And he and Ernie will have to do chores, like picking peas and scooping dog poop. Then, he breaks the model truck that’s one of the only things Grandma still has of his deceased uncle.
Next, there’s no Internet, so the questions he keeps track of in his notebook (over 400 so far) will have to go un-Googled. The fears of stable, straight-arrow athlete Trace are clarified in lovely sparks of concrete poetry among Hopkins’ free verse, as he learns to tell adults when he sees his beloved brother acting dangerously.Ĭompassionate optimism for a boy who can’t control the chaos around him.Įleven-year-old Brooklynite Genie has “worry issues,” so when he and his older brother, Ernie, are sent to Virginia to spend a month with their estranged grandparents while their parents “try to figure it all out,” he goes into overdrive.įirst, he discovers that Grandpop is blind. Observations from Trace frame Cat as praiseworthy by virtue of her not being like the other girls, a mindset that conveys misogynistic overtones. Her dad’s a retired major leaguer, and she has sibling problems too. At least Trace has a friend in Catalina Sánchez, the new girl on Little League. Trace knows it’s rotten for Will, but still, why did his awesome brother have to give up all his cool friends? Now he argues with their dad, hangs out with losers-and steals Trace’s stuff. He has chronic headaches, depression, and muscle spasms that prevent him from smiling. It’s been a year and a half since Will’s traumatic brain injury, and he’s got a hair-trigger temper. He’s played football since he was a little kid and has been tackled plenty when he gets horrifically hurt in a JV game, it’s just one too many head injuries. Seventeen-year-old Will used to be the best brother, but now he’s so angry. Twelve-year-old Trace Reynolds, who is White and Puerto Rican, wants to get noticed for the right reasons: good grades, Little League, pulling weeds for Mr. What can a good kid do when his big brother starts being a problem?
0 kommentar(er)
