Show Them You're Good

Starred review from February 24, 2020
Hobbs (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace) tracks four L.A. high school seniors through the 2016–2017 school year in this exceptional work of investigative journalism. His subjects include charter school classmates Tio, a class leader with high expectations for college, and Carlos, an undocumented immigrant simultaneously applying to Ivy League universities and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Meanwhile, Owen, whose privileged background hides his struggles with acceptance, and Sam, the son of a Chinese woman and a Jewish-American man, attend wealthy Beverley Hills High School. Hobbs follows the boys through adolescent rituals—exams and AP classes, prom, extracurricular activities, “the timeless conundrum” of whether or not to stay with their high school girlfriends—as well as more personal issues, including Tio’s father’s alcoholism, the impact of Owen’s mother’s debilitating illness on her family, and the threat of deportation hanging over Carlos’s parents. The juxtaposition of the boys’ vivid voices and personalities with Hobbs’s sociological perspective makes for a stirring examination of life in L.A., the country’s political landscape, the flaws of the American higher education system, and the rites of passage from boyhood into manhood. Laced with compassion, insight, and humor, this appealing study deserves a wide readership.

April 1, 2020
The ups and downs of male college-bound high school seniors during the 2016-2017 school year in Los Angeles. In his first book, the much-praised The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace (2014), Hobbs, a Yale graduate, focused on a black male Yale graduate who was murdered after returning to his hometown of Newark. In the author's second work of nonfiction, the clear hero is Carlos, an undocumented Mexican immigrant also headed to Yale. Here, however, the music is polyphonic: Hobbs follows nine young men of varied races and ethnicities--four main and five lesser figures--cutting back and forth among their splintered accounts of college applications, taking AP classes, playing video games, pursuing after-school activities, and despairing over the 2016 election. Two key players attended the �nimo Pat Brown charter school: the academic star Carlos, who applied to both Ivy League colleges and for protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program; and Tio, a student leader rightly worried that his grades, though high, would not get him into top California colleges. The two other linchpins of the story attended Beverly Hills High School: Owen knew he was well off, but his mother was bedridden with a chronic illness; Sam's mother, who was born in China, grilled him about school in ways he found "maddening." At times, the author's jump-cuts among the nine voices make it difficult to keep the teenagers straight, particularly the too-numerous secondary figures, and the story lacks the strong, cohesive narrative of his earlier work. Nonetheless, Hobbs offers a rare group portrait of well-rounded, hardworking male teenagers focused on college and securing a bright future. It's sure to cheer school librarians looking for true stories of male high school students known for something besides their athletic talents or troubles with the law. A unique slice of male high school life with strong crossover appeal for YA readers.

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August 1, 2020
In the summer of 2016, Hobbs (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, 2014) began closely following the lives of several senior boys in two L.A. high schools: �nimo Pat Brown Charter High School in South L.A. and Beverly Hills High. At APB, Carlos becomes known as "Princeton" as soon as word of his early acceptance gets around; Tio skateboards, runs a marathon, and plans to study engineering in college. BH student Owen considers staying in L.A. after graduation to be close to his chronically ill mother and study acting; Sam thinks the University of Chicago could offer the right combination of rigorous and far away. In chronological chapters, Hobbs cycles through sections centered on these boys and five others, pausing to delve into topics like the college-admissions process, the California state university system, and college-board exams. With his fly-on-the-wall reporting style, life happens and the boys emerge fully themselves: driven, funny, sweet, wise, terrified, excited. A uniquely illuminating window onto the lives of young people in the midst of a hugely consequential year.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 1, 2020

Hobbs (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace) writes an intimate, empathetic chronicle of senior year of high school, as lived by Carlos and Tio at �nimo Pat Brown, a charter high school in Los Angeles, and Owen and Sam, 15 miles and a world away at Beverly Hills High School. Hobbs listened to and observed these college-bound students throughout the 2016-17 school year, during which Carlos was accepted to an array of Ivy League institutions while awaiting DACA acceptance and while his family faced eviction from their longtime home. Meanwhile, Tio coped with his father's alcoholism and struggled with college admissions, but also ran the Los Angeles Marathon and was crowned prom king. Sam spent his free time in Academic Decathlon and navigated his relationship with his Chinese American mother, and Owen reckoned with his privilege as scion of an accomplished Hollywood family, and with his mother's debilitating chronic illness. VERDICT Hobbs arranges dozens of vignettes of these boys and their friends, foregrounding their experiences and centering their voice in a beautifully rendered group portrait of adolescents and of adolescence itself. [See Prepub Alert, 9/23/19.]--Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2019

Author of the New York Times best-selling The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner, Hobbs addresses the messy, controversy-sparking issue of applying to college today by profiling four Los Angeles boys at two very different schools. Tiofilo Cortez wants to attend an elite college despite his father's dismissive attitude. Carlos Rodriguez, the son of undocumented delivery workers, hopes to attend Yale like his older brother. Owen Lloyd feels conflicted about his studies but aims to please his parents. And part-Jewish, part-Chinese Sam Schwartz yearns for the independence college promises. With a 150,000-copy first printing and a six-city tour. (The publication date has been pushed from April to June.)

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.