November 1, 2024
In 1963 Czechoslovakia, a hockey game could mean life or death. Ten-year-old Lukas and his brother Denys want nothing more than to play hockey. The family is poor, but hockey is the one bright light for the boys. Then their father, who works for a newspaper, is arrested. No one knows where he has been taken or when he might be coming home. Now Lukas and Denys realize they are being watched, too, and when the secret police promise them information about their father if they help throw a game against a visiting Soviet team, Lukas must make some difficult […]
May 3, 2024
A hilarious story about a group of underdogs who come together when they are forced to attend summer school—for failing PE. Funny and fast-paced like all of Gordon Korman’s stories, this one offers whacky characters and situations, and winning lines. Its only problem is having so many characters, all written in first person, presented unevenly throughout the book. For instance, the book allots eleven chapters to main character Yash (initially every other chapter, and further on every two-plus chapters). In contrast, it gives six chapters each (of 29) to two other characters, three to one other, and one each to […]
February 2, 2024
The other night, Trace Brewster, Max’s best friend and star hockey player for the Hawks, scored on his own net and put the team’s chances of qualifying for an upcoming tournament in jeopardy. Since then, Trace has gone silent and is shutting everyone out. But Max thinks there’s more going on with his friend than what happened on the ice. For one thing, there are bruises on Trace’s face that he refuses to explain. Can Max find a way to get Trace to open up and help him in time for the big game? The only thing that Max […]
November 3, 2023
Walker Lauderdale hasn’t cried once since his daddy went missing. And even though everyone says his father is dead, Walker won’t give up hope. He knows his father is out there, somewhere, cutting a wild trail through the Ozarks like always. But when a relative threatens to kick Walker and his momma out of the family home, Walker realizes he has no choice but to look for his daddy—a search that leads him straight to a drug-addled and dangerous man named Lukas Fisher. While attempting to balance life as a normal fifteen-year-old boy and star player on the football team, […]
October 6, 2023
Thirteen-year-old Jonah is determined to prove that anxiety won’t stop him from succeeding as his hockey team’s goalie in this dynamic novel in verse. This contemporary ice hockey-story for pre-teens is rather unusual for being written in lyrics. That makes it not only a fast-moving, engaging story (especially to hockey fans), but a book likely to turn readers on to verse. Seriously! It’s all in Jonah’s point of view, and he’s 13 (though he often feels younger). Like so many his age, he aspires to be a professional hockey player, his best friends have the same ambitions and he’s passionate […]
August 4, 2023
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Muhammad Ali, one of the most revered―and controversial―figures of the 20th Century, immortalized those words with the beauty, strength and originality of his boxing style. Now, his epic story is retold in this striking graphic novel. Messenger showcases exactly why Ali became celebrated worldwide as “The Greatest.” Boxer, philanthropist and activist Muhammad Ali was one of the most photographed―and photogenic―figures in the history of sports. He demanded to be looked at and seen, and this epic captures his meteoric rise from Cassius Clay to Olympian and heavyweight champion of the world with […]
June 2, 2023
From a very young age, Udoka Clendon has been pushed relentlessly by his family on a troubling pursuit for an athletic scholarship. Now he is burdened by expectations and self-doubt as he tries to reignite his passion for the game. This novel shows the trials and traumas of becoming fixated on a dream of sports stardom. It’s unusual to mix a sports story with scenes of what goes on behind closed doors in sports therapy. But Udoka is suffering serious self-doubts and needs help, and Dr. Feldbrook may offer just what he needs. The therapy sessions allow the reader to glimpse […]
April 7, 2023
This honest, engrossing graphic memoir tells the story of professional athlete and activist Akim Aliu’s incredible life as a hockey prodigy in Canada. Akim Aliu — also known as “Dreamer” — is a Ukrainian-Nigerian-Canadian professional hockey player whose career took him all around the world and who experienced systemic racism at every turn. Dreamer tells Akim’s incredible story, from being the only black child in his Ukrainian community, to his family struggling to make ends meet while living in Toronto, to confronting the racist violence he often experienced both on and off the ice. This is a gut-wrenching and riveting […]
January 6, 2023
Some people dream of happily ever after, but all 17-year-old Josh Roberts wants is a roof over his head and for his little brother to be safe. Josh’s father has gone missing without a trace. Now Josh and his 9-year-old brother, Twig, are stuck living with Gran in her trailer. Problem is, Gran didn’t ask to take care of any kids, and she’s threatening to call Social Services unless Josh can find his dad. After paying off Gran to take in his little brother, Josh risks truancy and getting kicked off his basketball team to take to the streets and […]
June 3, 2022
Thirteen-year-old Dale Melnyk finds himself stuck in an iron lung, desperately fighting for breath — and wishing he could die. It is the worst outbreak of polio in the history of Winnipeg, and Dale is one of the many young victims being treated in the early 1950s.
Second Chances follows Dale's slow and often agonizing struggle to regain his life, first of all to breathe on his own and then to regain the use of his limbs. Will he ever be able to play hockey again, he wonders? Dale comes to realize that he is doing better than a number of the other patients including Charlene, a young Métis girl confined to a wheelchair but always trying to help their fellow patients.
When Dale discovers his younger brother Brent is also in the polio ward because their father rejected the school program vaccine, a confrontation with his father becomes inevitable. Brent is not getting better and will be dealing with paralysis indefinitely.
When Dale finally emerges from his recovery he must reassess what is most important in life — a life that has been changed forever.