The Berlin Boxing Club (YA)

The Berlin Boxing Club. Robert Sharenow. 2011. HarperCollins. 416 pages.

As Herr Boch finished the last lecture of the school year, I sketched one final caricature of him into the margins of my notebook.

For someone who does not like sports novels--who claims to not like sports novels--I sure did love Robert Sharenow's The Berlin Boxing Club. Perhaps I just require HEART in my sports novels?

The Berlin Boxing Club is set in Berlin during the mid-to-late 1930s. The hero of the novel is a young Jewish boy, Karl Stern. When readers first meet Karl, he does not even identify himself as being Jewish. It's not that he's trying to hide the fact from his peers, acting one way at home, another way in public. He just does not see himself as being ethnically or religiously Jewish. His sister and father look Jewish--though Karl still argues that they don't particularly act stereotypically Jewish--so it's a shock to him that he's forced to wear this Jewish identity. And being Jewish in Nazi Germany, well, it's nothing anyone wants to be. The new laws being so strict, so harsh. (Karl ends up being kicked out of school, getting beat up by bullies, etc. And that's just the start of it, but I won't go much beyond that in this review.)

Karl also does NOT see himself as athletic. He does NOT see himself as a fighter. But when his father's friend, Max Schmeling, offers to train him, offers him a membership at the Berlin Boxing Club, well, Karl finds himself wanting/needing this. His father would have preferred that Max pay money for the painting he bought at his gallery, but this does seem to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So Karl has to do a great deal of training to get himself in shape before he even steps into the boxing club, Max gave him a list of exercises, a training regimen. Will Karl have the stamina and motivation to continue, to live up to his potential....

So The Berlin Boxing Club is about so much more than boxing. It is even much more than just a novel about "the fights" between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. It is a book about fighting to survive in desperate times. It is about how difficult it was to be Jewish in Nazi Germany. It's a thought-provoking read, very emotional, very compelling!

Read The Berlin Boxing Club

• If you're interested in reading about this time period, Nazi Germany in the 1930s
• If you're interested in reading Jewish fiction
• If you're looking for a companion read to The Book Thief
• If you're looking for a sports book with heart and soul

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

The Running Dream (YA)

The Running Dream. Wendelin Van Draanen. 2011. Random House. 336 pages.

My life is over. Behind the morphine dreams is the nightmare of reality. A reality I can't face.

Jessica was a great runner, a star of her school's track team. But one day on the bus ride back from a meet, something horrible happens. Someone crashes into their bus. Lucy, her teammate, dies, and Jessica loses her leg. The novel is about how she copes with that loss. How the loss of a leg, at first, is the loss of a dream. But how through that loss she's able to see some things more clearly than before. Like how much her teammates really do care about her. So much that they sacrifice their time and energy and put all their heart and soul into fund raising for her. Like how she sees another classmate for the first time, a classmate in a wheel chair for quite another reason. Rosa was always so easy to ignore before, but now she's seeing her as a real person worth knowing.

So The Running Dream is a novel about hopes and dreams and perseverance. It is an emotional novel, of course. But it isn't purely inspirational. Jessica is, in many ways, just an ordinary girl with ordinary problems. Like how the guy she has a crush on doesn't really see her like that--not really. And how she struggles with keeping up in math, etc.

Read The Running Dream

• If you're interested in sports stories with heart
• If you're looking for an emotional, inspirational read
• If you're looking for YA novels about friendship and family

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip (MG/YA)

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip. Jordan Sonnenblick. 2012.  Scholastic. 304 pages.

The first picture is a wide-angle shot, taken through the chain-link fence of the backstop behind home plate. There's a boy standing on a pitcher's mound in full uniform: green and gold. His cap is pulled low over his eyes, and his unruly black hair sticks out below the brim in all directions. He leans in toward home plate, his throwing arm dangling loose at his side. He must be looking in to get his sign from the catcher.

I expected Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip to be good--really good. Why? Well, Jordan Sonnenblick rarely--if ever--disappoints. He's an amazing writer; he's great at writing characters that I just love. His stories tend to be emotional and compelling. Though almost always they have a lightness to them as well. Curveball The Year I Lost My Grip did not disappoint. While I'm not sure that it is my favorite, favorite Sonnenblick novel--he's written so many that I just love!!! It is easy to recommend this one.

The hero of Curveball is Peter Friedman. The summer before his freshman year in high school, he plays his last baseball game. The injury in his arm is so severe that doctors tell him he'll never, ever be able to play the game he loves so much. So who is he if he's not a great pitcher and catcher? Who is he if he's not a great athlete? Well. He'll have plenty of time to figure that all out.

One of the main characters in Curveball is Peter's grandfather. I just LOVED him. I think there aren't enough--could never be enough--YA books that highlight the special relationship between grandparent and grandchild. Inter-generational stories make me happy, very happy. Even when they're sad. Even when they're bittersweet. Peter and his grandfather are incredibly close. And so it's not all that surprising that Peter's interest in photography becomes all that much stronger. (His grandfather was a professional.)

So Peter's interest in photography leads him to take a class where he meets a girl that wows him...

This YA book has it all. Great characters, good storytelling. It's just an enjoyable read!

Read Curveball The Year I Lost My Grip

• If you're interested in baseball
• If you're interested in photography
• If you like realistic romances
• If you're a fan of Jordan Sonnenblick
• If you like coming-of-age stories with a strong emphasis on friendship

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

A Diamond in the Desert (MG)

A Diamond in the Desert. Kathryn Fitzmaurice. 2012. February 2012. Penguin. 256 pages.

Gila River was the place where my eight-year-old sister, Kimi, learned to go to the bathroom with a white cotton pillowcase pulled over her head. It was Mama who came up with the idea after a week of Kimi refusing to go.
The pillowcase, Mama said, took the place of the walls and doors that weren't in the latrine, and gave some privacy from others sitting close by trying to use the bathroom, too.
"No one will see you through it," Mama promised. "Yes, you'll be able to breathe. The air can get in."
Then she stood for three long minutes with the pillowcase over her own head to prove this.
"But what if it takes me more than three minutes in the latrine?" said Kimi.
Mama didn't answer. Instead, she pulled the pillowcase back over her head, sat down on the concrete floor, knees bent, shoulders curled in. Stayed there until the desert bats came out and the sky turned dark orange.
Kimi walked a circle around her, and you could see her deciding that this idea might work.
"Can you still breathe?"
And each time Kimi asked, Mama nodded. But I don't think Mama was taking all that time to show Kimi she could breathe. I think Mama was hiding the sadness she didn't want Kimi to see. (1-2)

I loved, loved, loved this book. It was such a GREAT book. I absolutely LOVED the writing--it was so beautiful, so practically perfect in every way.

I LOVED the characters. I did. As much as I enjoyed the main character--the narrator--a young boy named Tetsu, I just LOVED a minor character called Horse. Oh, how I loved him--I really felt for him. I felt for so many of the characters.

And the story itself was just wonderfully compelling. A Diamond in the Desert is set in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during World War II. Tetsu's family is just one of many, many Japanese families forced to live in an internment camp after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

At this particular camp, Gila River, Tetsu is one of many who joins a baseball team. Playing baseball is one of the ways they can still feel normal. Many, many things have changed since America entered the war, and they may not have many freedoms, many joys, in this camp. But baseball. Well, it encourages them, gives them hope.

Kyo's Papa brought a bat to the field one night. He picked up small rocks from the pile of cleared-away stones, then threw them one by one into the air like they were baseballs, hitting them as far as he could.
Kyo, Ben, and I, we started running after them.
We fielded those rocks like we were playing a World Series game, and we didn't care how many times we crashed into each other, or how dirty we got, or even about skinned elbows.
We didn't care about the mess hall closing for dinner or torn pants, or the hole in my shoe getting bigger.
We just wanted to make the greatest catches ever in the whole history of baseball. And that night, each of us did. (84)

But. This book is not just about boys playing baseball. It is SO MUCH MORE than that. This book has heart and soul. This book has depth. It is just so rich. It's beautiful, capturing your heart almost from the start. This is a book that completely wowed me.

Read A Diamond in the Desert

• If you are looking for a great children's book; the quality of this one is amazing!
• If you enjoy historical fiction
• If you enjoy stories set during World War II
• If you are looking to read more about the Japanese Internment camps in the U.S.
• If you're a baseball fan
• If you're NOT a baseball fan

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews