Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Publication Date: 9/1/2020
Pages: 176
Publisher: Penguin Kids
WINNER OF THE CORETTA SCOTT KING AUTHOR AWARD!
National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson’s stirring novel-in-verse explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed and the cost of professional sports on Black bodies.
For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone’s hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he’s as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ’s house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ’s mom explains it’s because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that–but it doesn’t make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can’t remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?
This beautiful novel in verse is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. The story is told from the point of view of 12 year old ZJ as he and his family deal with the end of his father’s professional football career. This story is filled with so much love within ZJ’s family from the good times during his father’s decorated football career to his father’s current struggles with the degenerative brain disease, C.T.E. While it is heartbreaking thinking of all of the families who go through these same struggles, this story is one of hope as ZJ’s family comes together to support his father and ZJ works to find new ways to connect with his dad as his disease progresses. Though intended for middle grade readers, the heart of this novel is something both teenagers and adults can relate to because everyone can related to the hardships that may come after happy times. In only 176 pages, this novel packs in so much emotion and leaves the reader feeling incredibly connected to the characters and story long after finishing the last page.
The Redhead Review 