by L D HarkraderBookList : From BookList, September 1, 2005, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.: Terms of Use: Gr. 4-7. Kirby Nickel, who secretly believes that hometown hero and basketball superstar Brett McGrew is his father, goes out for the seventh-grade team in order to meet McGrew at the end of the season. From the grandmother who raised Kirby to the hostile school board president to his inscrutable coach, everyone in his small Kansas town is mad about basketball. But when Coach distributes invisible uniforms for the team to wear at practice, Kirby and his teammates wonder what kind of madness drives the man. This fresh, first-person novel will have readers laughing at times, feeling Kirby's pain at others, and moved at the end. The revelation of Kirby's paternity will not surprise those readers who care to figure it out, but this mystery never was the point of the story. Harkrader offers an amusing, wholly affectionate portrayal of a small-town community's devotion to basketball and of a klutzy kid's success on the court in spite of himself. An entertaining first novel. CarolynPhelan.: distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.:
From BookList, September 1, 2005, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Gr. 4-7. Kirby Nickel, who secretly believes that hometown hero and basketball superstar Brett McGrew is his father, goes out for the seventh-grade team in order to meet McGrew at the end of the season. From the grandmother who raised Kirby to the hostile school board president to his inscrutable coach, everyone in his small Kansas town is mad about basketball. But when Coach distributes invisible uniforms for the team to wear at practice, Kirby and his teammates wonder what kind of madness drives the man. This fresh, first-person novel will have readers laughing at times, feeling Kirby's pain at others, and moved at the end. The revelation of Kirby's paternity will not surprise those readers who care to figure it out, but this mystery never was the point of the story. Harkrader offers an amusing, wholly affectionate portrayal of a small-town community's devotion to basketball and of a klutzy kid's success on the court in spite of himself. An entertaining first novel. CarolynPhelan.
