Customer Reviews

Never So Green

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a fifth grade teacher and am always on the lookout for new books to challenge students. I picked up this novel and looked at the jacket. It seemed innocent enough for a fifth grader. Upon reading it I felt that the subject matter was far to advanced for my classroom. I believe that the seventh grade might be a better spot for this novel.

The book itself was very engaging. The author uses baseball as a venue for healing. I think that Mr. Johnson has quite a future ahead of him.

This is an elegant and haunting depiction of adolescence. I came across this book while browsing... and was stuck by its cover. I expected a lighthearted book about little league baseball. I discovered something much greater. This story and these characters have strayed with me for weeks. I look forward to reading more of Mr. Johnston's work.

Tex gets something quite different for the summer when instead of spending the time with his father and his new girlfriend, he lands in the lap of his mother and her new family. Tex's friendship with his new stepfather is uncertain, until a common connection in baseball introduces him to a new world and brings new family ties. Just as all seems to be coming together, Tex makes a discovery which will again change his family's life. Realistic, involving fiction.

A driven book with a unique literary style of compact sentences. Even the pauses are in just the right places.

Tim Johnston did to Sexual abuse what Laurie Hals Anderson did to eating disorders in Wintergirls. He looked it in the eye,
dissected it, and offered it raw on a plate. The only condiment he offers with it, is the beautiful tight language of his prose,
and the real life that surrounds it. A life of baseball and true-to-life characters; of functional and dysfunctional families;
a life where issues such as physical disability, and gender are dealt with by the main young adult characters,
a life where even school bullies have many shades of greyness, and no one is totally unredeemable.
The ending presents a superb example of a moral dilemma.
I will reread it. I will give it to my son on his thirteenth birthday.

The characters come alive; I can practically see them walking around in front of me. This is a terrific book. The protagonist may be 12 years old, but the book is geared for adults or teens. The world author Tim Johnston creates and the people who inhabit it delight me (I laughed out loud), touch me and stay with me long after I've finished the book. It is a glorious book - I plan on re-reading!

I think this is one of the best books I ever read. I compare it with Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows it is so good. How he struggles with his family and becomes a great baseball player.