Tryouts

This addition to the Brinkley Yearbooks graphic novel series (Picture Day, rev. 9/23) stands on its own. Alexandra Olsen -- or Al -- loves baseball. Her middle school's team has won nine back-to-back championships, and they are shooting for a "full decade of baseball dominance." With encouragement from the new coach, Al tries out and makes the cut; she becomes the only girl on the team. When the school's attention-obsessed athletic director calls in a news crew to report on the gender-inclusive baseball season, Al's teammates end up resenting her for hogging the spotlight despite her best efforts to share it. Meanwhile, the school's girls' basketball team is crushing it on the court, but their record-setting season is all but ignored. As Al tries to rebuild teamwork and trust on and off the field, her best friends are also branching out, joining the art club and resurrecting a retired school mascot (a goose called "The Brinkley Beak"). These friends are part of Al's stellar support system, which buoys her spirits as she reclaims and reframes her story. With bold black outlines, striking color work, and dynamic layouts, the art adds further depth to the well-paced plot, memorable characters, and well-realized setting. In one impressively delineated scene, characters converse clearly while playing a chaotic game of dodgeball. Rollicking and tender, this comic knocks it out of the park. Elisa GallJuly/August 2024 p.140 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Characters from Sax's Picture Day (2023) try out something new. Thirteen-year-old Alexandra Olsen has played rec league baseball for years. Now, as a seventh grader at Brinkley Middle School, she tries out for boys' baseball. The new coach welcomes her, and Al is skilled enough to make the team, along with Julian Veras, her nonbinary friend from rec league. Meanwhile, classmate Milo Castillo finds the courage to join the art club, something that's outside his comfort zone, and extroverted Viv Sullivan revives the Brinkley Beak, an old school mascot. When Al is interviewed on local TV for being the first girl ballplayer at Brinkley, it leads to dissent among her teammates; she copes by becoming overly demanding, which causes further friction. Sax does well at depicting a wide range of young people and validating a variety of interests and talents. Al is a fully realized character, and the issue of girls' equity in sports will be inviting to readers who enjoy graphic novels such as Misty Wilson and David Wilson's Play Like a Girl (2022) and Matt Tavares' Hoops (2023). In a subplot, the Brinkley girls' basketball team's undefeated season is overlooked in the hubbub over Al's presence on the boys' baseball team. The art is very well done, especially the sports scenes shown from multiple points of view. Al is white; there's racial diversity among the supporting cast. A story that will encourage readers to spread their wings. (character sketches, author's note, resources) (Graphic fiction. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.