Skip to main content

Review: Slugfest

By

 

Slugfest
By Gordon Korman
New York: Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2024. Fiction. 292 pages.

Yash is widely considered the best athlete in town. In fact, he spent his last year of junior high playing for the high school's JV teams instead of taking his normal P.E. class because the teams needed him so much.  And what's the thanks he gets? Being forced to make up his missed P.E. credit during summer school (nicknamed slugfest because the attendees are all of the unathletic kids that failed P.E. during the school year) or risking failing and having to repeat the year over. Yash even has to miss football camp and risk losing his spot on the team to attend. The tale is told from the perspectives of Yash and his fellow Slugfest schoolmates twins Stuart and Sarah (whose sole form of physical activity seems to be fighting with each other), Cleo (who's athletic but has to attend summer school because she missed so many classes when she broke her foot), Jesse (a loveable practical joker), and Kaden (who is great at academics but less great at sports). 

When Yash's spot on the team is threatened by a new quarterback, he and his Slugfest classmates decide to enter in to the city-wide seven-on-seven football tournament to prove that Yash is the man for the job. Can Yash and his team of outcasts keep from embarrassing themselves against real football teams? You'll have to read to find out.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Amazing Generation

By
The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World Written by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price  Illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng New York: Rocky Pond Books, 2025. Informational. 226 pages.  In a kid-friendly adaptation of his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt teams up with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone , to bring the power of good information directly to the hands of those that this issue affects most directly — kids on the cusp of getting their own smartphones. The book presents information about the drawbacks of having a smartphone and social media too soon in clear and easy-to-understand language, with eye-catching graphics and pop-outs. Throughout the book, quotes from real teens and young adults, called screen "rebels" by the authors, emphasize the points the authors are trying to make. Fictional characters are featured throughout in a graphic novel story, which further emphasizes the po...
Post a Comment
Read more