Shooting Star

Deborah Dowson is a Canadian children’s librarian living in Powell,
Ohio.

The girls at Nellie McClung Middle School are ready for a new season of
school sports so it is a shock when their teammate, the normally poised
and patient Quyen, has a major misunderstanding with coach Bradford and
decides to quit school sports entirely. Quyen’s anger stems partly
from a frustrating situation at home and partly from a reluctance to
communicate her feelings. However, Quyen is now free to join the bantam
basketball team at another school. Quyen excels at the sport and becomes
a team leader, but she must also face Anna, an aggressive teammate. When
Anna uses a racial insult to bully Quyen, the coach acts immediately to
reprimand the girl. Anna’s ensuing apology sheds light on the source
of her angry attitude, her bullying behavior comes to an end, and the
team plays better than ever. Now Quyen has to deal with her situation at
home.

Cynthia Bates portrays the world of school sports with a realism that
springs from her experience as a teacher and coach. Though sports are
central to the story, it is the characters’ compelling personal
situations that give the story its drama. The perspective of the
Vietnamese-Canadian family is very insightful; the normal code of
behavior for the family is a high level of discipline, expectations, and
reserved manner of communication. These qualities in Quyen together with
the story’s serious moral situations create an unexpectedly serious
“sports story.” Recommended.