Seventh-grader Charlie Gold, at six feet two, would be perfect as center for the school basketball travel team, but at tryouts, the 13-year-old\u2019s anger gets the better of him, and he\u2019s subsequently cut. He and his older sister, Cecilia, who works and takes classes at St. Hildegarde\u2019s University, are no strangers to hardship; they\u2019ve lost both parents and are barely scraping by in their grandmother\u2019s old house. Things get worse for Charlie when the incident at the tryouts becomes a viral video that earns him online trolls\u2019 unfounded ire. On the plus side, he\u2019s soon earning cash at St. Hildegarde\u2019s, where he takes calculus and begins tutoring older, full-time students. The university\u2019s new coach is impressed by Charlie and Charlie\u2019s best friend Jalen\u2019s scrupulous tracking of college basketball players\u2019 stats on spreadsheets. But an unexpected snag further complicates the boy\u2019s life. Michalowski\u2019s young, endearing hero suffers familiar troubles\u2014he stands in the shadow of his late father, a \u201cbasketball legend,\u201d and he doesn\u2019t fit in at his middle school or at St. Hildegarde\u2019s. The grounded narrative is often relatable, as Charlie\u2019s mistakes are understandable, and the online hate he gets is sadly realistic. Despite Charlie\u2019s woes, he leads a largely feel-good story buoyed by its warm cast of characters\u2014Cecilia acts as Charlie\u2019s parent, a job she takes on with love and apparent relish, and Charlie willingly hands over his tutoring revenue to help pay bills and saves the rest. Other standouts include the fiercely loyal Jalen and Zoey, the coach\u2019s daughter. The author imbues the novel with a winning positivity as Charlie fights to maintain \u201cpoise\u201d (a lesson from his father) and looks for the best in both people and unpleasant circumstances.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seventh-grader Charlie Gold, at six feet two, would be perfect as center for the school basketball travel team, but at tryouts, the 13-year-old\u2019s anger gets the better of him, and he\u2019s subsequently cut. He and his older sister, Cecilia, who works and takes classes at St. Hildegarde\u2019s University, are no strangers to hardship; they\u2019ve lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}