This Way Home

August 31, 2015
Growing up against the backdrop of Baltimore’s streets and basketball courts, 17-year-old Elijah is also desperately searching for the father he never knew. Basketball is Elijah’s way to something better in life, and his two best friends, Michael and Dylan, are by his side. During the summer after his junior year, Elijah goes to work for Banks, a mysterious Army veteran his mother knows, as he and his friends prepare for an important street basketball tournament. When tragedy strikes, Elijah is faced with increasingly untenable situations, including a showdown with a local gang, and must rely on Banks’s lessons to survive. Moore (Discovering Wes Moore) and Goodman (Kindness for Weakness) present difficult circumstances in an even-handed manner, while messages about friendship, hard work, and the importance of having—and following—a dream are an organic part of the story, delivered without preaching. Consequences arrive in a similarly no-nonsense fashion, standing on the strength of the story rather than literary acrobatics. Ages 14–up. Agent: (for Moore) Linda Loewenthal, David Black Agency; (for Goodman) Seth Fishman, Gernert Company.

September 15, 2015
Lifelong best friends and basketball teammates Elijah, Dylan, and Michael become reluctantly entangled with a Baltimore street gang. When Michael offers his friends each a pair of $400 Kobe 10 sneakers and won't explain how he got them, Elijah knows he should say no. In the end, loyalty to his friends and the desire to get out of his own ratty shoes prevail. Trouble inevitably follows in the form of a smooth-talking gangster who always seems to know Elijah's-and, more frighteningly, Elijah's mother's-whereabouts. Elijah longs for his father, who left when Elijah was a child, but gains a father figure in Banks, a gruff ex-military man who hires Elijah to help with yardwork and seems to delight in setting him impossible tasks. As the obligations attached to the shoes and other extravagant gifts slowly and grimly become apparent, the boys find themselves faced with impossible choices. Defy the gang and face consequences, or become even more enmeshed? Each boy's decision is informed by another inevitability: Elijah, book-smart and athletically gifted, is headed toward college, but the fates of the other two are less certain. The portrayal of the gang is pared-down, more symbolic than realistic, but the stakes are high, and the sense of impending doom is heavy throughout. A taut, haunting tragedy. (Fiction. 12-18)

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October 1, 2015

Gr 8 Up-Moore, who gained attention for his autobiographical The Other Wes Moore (Spiegel & Grau, 2010), turns to fiction, with mixed results. Seventeen-year-old Elijah is the best basketball player in his neighborhood. With his friends Michael and Dylan, he even has a chance to win the adult division of the local tournament. The finals are televised, and college scouts will be watching. That's why Blood Street Nation, a gang in their neighborhood, want the boys to play in their colors, or else. When the pressure turns deadly, Elijah must figure out how to break free. While the characterizations of Elijah and the people around him feel authentic, this realism is at odds with the overly formal and inconsistent narrative voice. The authors do a fine job of building tension throughout the story. However, the dramatic yet unbelievable ending, in which the villains are brought down in a deux ex machina fashion after cartoonishly explaining all the details of their secret plan to the main character, will frustrate readers. While we need more books with characters like Elijah and his friends, the poor execution of this title will leave readers cold. VERDICT A secondary purchase; offer teens books by Jason Reynolds instead.-Elizabeth Saxton, Tiffin, OH

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 For his fiction debut about hoops, friendship, and family, best-seller Moore teams up with award-winning Goodman. The summer before his senior year of high school, Elijah's got one dream: having his long-lost dad see him play in the nationally broadcast local basketball championship. He gets halfway thereplaying in the big game with his two best friends, Michael and Dylanbut there's a hitch. Michael scores their team a sponsorship-type deal with a local gang, but when the boys renege on their deal at the last minute, one of their own is gunned down. In matter-of-fact prose perhaps better suited for nonfiction, Moore and Goodman nevertheless plumb the complexities of Elijah's situation with remarkable depth. Readers will be beside themselves when the heart-wrenching truth is unveiled. Brimming with hard realities about the choices we make, the friendships we keep, and the unlikely allies we find along the way, this affecting novel helps to fill the gaping hole left by Walter Dean Myers' passing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)