From a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and New York Times bestselling author, this coming-of-age story follows Chris Richards after a basketball game goes wrong and leaves him searching for answers about his brother’s strange behavior.
Chris Richards has always looked up to Jax, his older brother and his parents' "golden child." Lately, though, Jax has been full of surprises. First he dropped out of law school; then he started hanging out with some shifty-looking friends. One day Jax asks Chris to recruit his best middle school teammates for a pick-up basketball game in the park. Chris doesn't think much of it until the wrong team wins and Jax goes ballistic. It turns out that Jax bet on the game, hoping to earn enough money to repay a debt to someone who doesn't forgive easily. While Chris tries to walk a thin tightrope between helping his brother and staying out of trouble, his friend Theo does some behind-the-scenes detective work to learn what Jax has been up to. The day Chris is roped into a police investigation is the day he realizes he made the wrong play.
3 of 3 copies available
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
February 3, 2015 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781423190417
- File size: 664 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781423190417
- File size: 664 KB
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- ATOS Level: 4.8
- Interest Level: 4-8(MG)
- Text Difficulty: 3
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Reviews
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November 15, 2014
Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld (Sasquatch in the Paint, 2013) team up for another exploration of the intersection of sports and life conduct.Chris is a good, quiet kid who likes to keep his head down. As he says, "I was friendly to everyone but friends with no one." Still, if the machinery of thought made much noise, Chris would be a one-man band. For a 13-year-old, he does considerable shrewd, high-ground thinking, as do his friends ("You know," one says, "not talking about things doesn't actually make them disappear"). Where it really shows itself is on the basketball court, where he plays a savvy, court-wise game. Enter his brother, Jax, a golden boy who appears to have fallen from the pedestal upon which his well-intentioned parents have placed him, and Chris' still waters are about to feel a hefty stone break their surface. Add his classmate Brooke, a sharp girl with plenty of her own baggage, and a waterspout is in the making. The authors' light hand allows readers to inhabit the characters; to taste the value of respect, dignity and vulnerability; and to embrace the elemental joy of sports-all without ever feeling like they are being tube fed. The shifting structure of the story and a clever series of blind alleys keep readers on tenterhooks. A deft, understated sports thriller with a solid moral compass. (Fiction. 8-12)COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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July 1, 2015
To eighth grader Chris, his brother Jax is "the Golden Boy, who shined like the sun"; Chris himself is "more the Bronze Boy...not worth much, and...easily forgotten." But Jax is in trouble, and it's Chris's time to shine as he and his friends try to figure out what's behind Jax's mysterious behavior. Basketball provides the mystery's backdrop, but the appealing characters propel the action.(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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