Krista Mathews's Blog: Making It Up Along The Way - Posts Tagged "a-z-challenge"
B/Z: A to Z Challenge
Boy21
What I Knew Going In: Like my A of Z book: nothing.
What You Should Know: Finley McManus is a nice kid who doesn’t talk and centers his world around basketball. He’s got ‘character,’ they say, but what they mean is he’s a classy kid who does what he’s told. He’s growing up in the racial tension of his town, Belmont, where black kids didn’t have white best friends and people aren’t allowed to say Irish Mob. But then his basketball coach asks a favor of him: make friends with a kid who’s just come to town, and you think it’ll be about his relationship with that kid. It’ll be about basketball. You would be wrong. It’s about a young man finally finding his words
Moment I Cried: After the first practice, when he and Boy21 talk to coach and you realize that Boy21 really does consider him his friend and Finley just GIVES HIM EVERYTHING
Best Thing: The trick of the narrative that I wasn’t prepared for. He literally lays it out in the first sentence of the book that he PRETENDS his first memory is basketball, but that’s a TRICK. A lie! And that didn’t even occur to me as something to keep watching for.
The image I associate with the book: Finely in the back of the car with his co-captain, quietly answering questions and staying silent about so many other things. Because he couldn’t talk
The sentence I wish I would have written: “You can lose yourself in repetition—quiet your thoughts; I learned the value of this at a very young age."
What I’ll remember most: the final scene. The heartbreak of it, and the lack of ‘hope,’ if that makes sense. It wasn’t a hopeful ending. It was a desperate one.
Love level out of 1000: 9500. So good. So much
What my 14 year old self would have learned from the book: that there are places in America where people can’t escape?
Main character’s mojo: quiet and kind
What I Knew Going In: Like my A of Z book: nothing.
What You Should Know: Finley McManus is a nice kid who doesn’t talk and centers his world around basketball. He’s got ‘character,’ they say, but what they mean is he’s a classy kid who does what he’s told. He’s growing up in the racial tension of his town, Belmont, where black kids didn’t have white best friends and people aren’t allowed to say Irish Mob. But then his basketball coach asks a favor of him: make friends with a kid who’s just come to town, and you think it’ll be about his relationship with that kid. It’ll be about basketball. You would be wrong. It’s about a young man finally finding his words
Moment I Cried: After the first practice, when he and Boy21 talk to coach and you realize that Boy21 really does consider him his friend and Finley just GIVES HIM EVERYTHING
Best Thing: The trick of the narrative that I wasn’t prepared for. He literally lays it out in the first sentence of the book that he PRETENDS his first memory is basketball, but that’s a TRICK. A lie! And that didn’t even occur to me as something to keep watching for.
The image I associate with the book: Finely in the back of the car with his co-captain, quietly answering questions and staying silent about so many other things. Because he couldn’t talk
The sentence I wish I would have written: “You can lose yourself in repetition—quiet your thoughts; I learned the value of this at a very young age."
What I’ll remember most: the final scene. The heartbreak of it, and the lack of ‘hope,’ if that makes sense. It wasn’t a hopeful ending. It was a desperate one.
Love level out of 1000: 9500. So good. So much
What my 14 year old self would have learned from the book: that there are places in America where people can’t escape?
Main character’s mojo: quiet and kind
Making It Up Along The Way
A blog from an adult who still reads young adult books without shame, standing in the aisle of Barnes and Noble's beside teenagers and explaining why exactly THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER is so good, but wi
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