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Drew L

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Summer Ball

by Mike Lupica

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in December 2017

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Drew L said: " Drew Lundeen
Language Arts Block 3
Due: December 15, 2017
Summer Ball Book Review
The book that I read for this quarter was called Summer Ball. The book was written by Mike Lupica and had a Lexile Level of 910L. This book was the follow-up from my last Drew Lundeen
Language Arts Block 3
Due: December 15, 2017
Summer Ball Book Review
The book that I read for this quarter was called Summer Ball. The book was written by Mike Lupica and had a Lexile Level of 910L. This book was the follow-up from my last quarter's book, Travel Team. The main character is Danny Walker. He is heading into summer not really feeling all that good. His friend, Tess, isn’t hanging out with him as much and he is having mixed feelings about a basketball camp he’s going to spend his whole summer at. It’s not really looking up for him, but as basketball camp starts and goes on, he finds out that he belongs at the camp and that he’s just as good or better than some of the players at camp.
This book was an amazing book. It had a great theme about how when times get tough, how are you going to bounce back. In the book, Danny had an “injury” and was trying to get home. But he realized how dumb he was acting and bounced back strong and went on to lead his team to the camp championship. This story also had great events and dialogue to propel action and reveal aspects of a character. 2 characters that it happened with were Lamar and Zach. Lamar was kind of the enemy and the bad guy and Zach was the little guy that tagged along and always stood up for his friends. With Lamar, one of the events that showed his “enemy” role was when he broke the needle off into Zach’s ball. Zach always had his trusty ball with him wherever he went, you never saw him without it. Lamar just ruined his ball on purpose. Zach then whipped the ball at Lamar and made him really angry. Lamar went over to Zach and just started shaking him really hard. Then Lamar lifted him up by his T-shirt. Danny told him to put him down and Lamar didn’t listen. Lamar then just jabbed Zach right in the stomach and made Zach double over with tears in his eyes. That was a real “bad guy” scene for Lamar. The event that happened with Zach was when Danny and Zach and some friends went to see Tess across the lake. What they were doing was against camp rules, but Danny really wanted to see Tess. Before they left, the story said that Zach was “just smiling at all of them at once in the light of a pretty amazing full moon, looking as happy as Danny had seen him without a basketball in his hands” (pg. 128). That shows just how much he loved tagging along with Danny and his friends. Also, after they had been to Tesses, Zach took all the blame for what they did and stood up for Danny and his friends. Those events really showed Zach’s love to tag along and how he would always stick up for his friends.
I really loved this book and how it talked about two kids who were short for their age, but could still compete at a high level. This book was also pretty predictable. About halfway into the book, you would be about 95% sure that Danny’s team would win the championship. That’s just how this book was and that aspect really added to the book and its features. Another great part to the book was the ending. The coach of Danny’s team, Ed Powers, didn’t really like Danny and even told him to maybe try a different sport like soccer. But at the end of the book when Danny’s team had just won the championship, Danny went up to Ed Powers and kicked the game ball right out of the arena. He then said “I could play soccer if I wanted...But I’m a basketball player”. Then he just walked past the coach and went to celebrate with his team. That was an amazing ending to an amazing book. I would recommend this book to pretty much anyone. It was an amazing read and I think anyone who would read it would love it. So all in all, it was an amazing book and I loved to read it. I hope that anyone looking for a book to read would give this book a chance. I guarantee that reading this book will be worth it. ...more "

Dec 14, 2017 10:45AM · see review