Team Picture - Hardcover

Grade 4-6-No ordinary sports story, this novel is an absorbing psychological study, in which a boy's passion for baseball is a metaphor for his emotional problems. Having lost his parents and brother in an automobile crash, 13-year-old David seeks a life he can control as well as he controls the ball on the pitcher's mound. He wants every pitch to be a strike. Losing a game means something else has happened without his consent. David keeps an emotional distance from everyone, including Paul, the bellman who rescued him in Family Pose (Atheneum, 1989), the prequel to this book. Hughes's skillful characterization allows readers to empathize without necessarily agreeing with David's behavior, which at one point causes his whole team to ostracize him. The barbed wire around this wounded child jeopardizes not only his position on the baseball team, but also his relationship with Paul, a recovering alcoholic who sees raising the boy as an opportunity to finally do something right. David's desire for a stable family life is shown in his anxious efforts to hide the fact that Paul is not his real father. His need for human contact, despite a gruff exterior, is touching. The realistic baseball action combined with a compelling examination of emotional isolation will make this fine book equally attractive to boys and girls.
Jackie Hechtkopf, Talent House School, Fairfax,
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 6^-8. Hughes, best known for his lighthearted Nutty series, returns to serious fiction with this first-rate sequel to Family Pose (1989), in which young runaway David becomes the foster child of a bellman at the hotel where he has been hiding out. The story opens with a tense scene in which David confronts his foster parent, Paul, who has a history of alcohol abuse and has come home drunk. Immediately, readers are drawn into the outer and inner worlds of these two complex characters, both of whom have so much to lose if David is removed from Paul's care. For David, removal means going back into a flawed child welfare system; for Paul, a twice-divorced father of three daughters, it means another failure as a father. A superb subplot involves David's baseball team's exciting run for the championship, with two complicated romantic relationships adding another dimension to the multilayered story. The ending is upbeat and hopeful; yet, as happens in real life, there are loose ends and conflicts that go unresolved. A poignant story that readers won't soon forget. Lauren Peterson