A Review of Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I happily set aside my usual diet of books about witches, shapechangers, and dragons when it comes to Catherine Murdock's YA novels about D.J. Schwenk. I'm also the kid that used to get hit in the head by the ball in any number of sports with names ending in -ball, but who cares? A good book is a good book, and the D.J. Schwenk books are very, very good: Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and now Front and Center.

D.J. is a tall, big-boned girl and a gifted athlete from a family of gifted athletes, but her family is not known for its communication skills. They aren't stupid, they're just not talkers. Her two older brothers are talented college football players. Her younger brother is athletic, too, though he talks so little that his teachers worry about him. In Dairy Queen, the coach of a rival high school sends his spoiled rich-boy quarterback to help out on the Schwenk farm, where D.J. is doing all of the work alone because her father has broken his hip. D.J. ends up coaching Brian Nelson in football, while he coaches her on the advantages of talking more. Being around someone who communicates encourages D.J. to question the fact that her older brothers aren't speaking to her father. D.J. is changing in other ways, too. She misses playing basketball, but eventually decides to try out for the football team, which stuns Brian, who will have to play against her. Of course, it stuns a lot of people for more obvious reasons.

In The Off Season, D.J. plays high school football, and she and Brian begin to get closer. But things start to go wrong—the farm's finances are in trouble, D.J.'s gay friend Amber gets bullied, Brian acts like he's ashamed to be seen in public with D.J., and then D.J. gets injured. It doesn't help that D.J. and Brian are featured in a People magazine article, which outs their relationship to the whole world. All of this becomes irrelevant, however, when D.J.'s older brother Win suffers a very serious injury on the sports field. She drops everything to stand by him, coaching and cajoling him through rehab.

In the third book, Front and Center, we find that although D.J. has learned to open up more thanks to her now-defunct relationship with Brian, she is still not the type to take center stage. As she returns to playing high school basketball, she realizes that's exactly what her coach expects her to do: become a leader for the team. Heavily recruited by college basketball coaches, D.J. finds that everyone around her is pushing her to verbally commit to playing Big Ten college ball. But she pulls back, afraid she can't take the pressure. Meanwhile, she is dating her buddy Beaner, although she still finds herself thinking about Brian Nelson. Even as D.J. leans toward playing for a smaller college team, life and the people who care about her conspire to convince her that she's got too much going for her to settle for less—whether in dating or in basketball.

I cannot emphasize enough how authentic D.J.'s narrative voice is. Sometimes in YA, we meet an endless parade of main characters who seem to be channeling terribly clever urban 30-somethings with their banter and sarcasm. In contrast, D.J. is such a fresh combination of ordinary and extraordinary, the way real girls are, the ones you walk past every day. Listen to her frank and slightly funny voice at the beginning of Front and Center, when she mistakenly thinks she's going to able to stay out of the limelight and avoid trouble, including boys:

But most of all—and this is what I was looking forward to the very, very most—I was done with all that boyfriend crap. Finished with the 24/7 Brian Nelson cable station that had been running nonstop inside my skull since July. No more feeling like I was some fluttery girl who doesn't have anything better to do all day long than think about her boyfriend. Because I did have better things to think about, thank you very much, because I am not the kind of girl who has boyfriends; I'm the kind who's just friends with boys, which is totally different and which I'm actually kind of good at. I'd pulled the plug on that Brian Nelson cable station for good.
That's why it felt so nice to be getting back to school. Because after five months I was back to being plain old background D.J. That's how I thought about it, anyway. In photographs of course I'm always in the background—it's a family joke, actually, that us Schwenk kids could go to school naked on picture day because we're all so crazy tall. But I mean that I was returning to the background of life. Where no one would really notice me or talk about me or even talk to me much except to say "Nice shot," and I could just hang out without too many worries at all.

It's a real gift to be able to watch D.J. struggle to grow into herself in Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and now Front and Center. Catherine Murdock is so adept that she even manages to let us know that D.J. will probably end up being an incredible basketball coach in ten or fifteen years. But this and other messages, such as the cow metaphor used so well in Dairy Queen, never call unnecessary attention to themselves. Which reminds me of D.J.'s own self-effacing style. Even so, D.J., the messages, and these three books still manage to shine. Read them, please. You will be very glad you got to know D.J. Schwenk.

A Review of Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp

I reviewed this book a few years ago on Amazon, and thinking about D.J. Schwenk (see review above) reminded me how much I like Hampton Green, a small-town football player who also has trouble expressing himself. Like D.J., Hampton must learn to believe in himself. And like D.J., he has a strong narrative voice. Here is a revised version of my earlier review:

Hampton Green's voice gives a whole new meaning to that overused expression, "pitch-perfect." I was wondering this morning if I had been a little too harsh in a couple of recent reviews, and then I read this book and felt justified by the difference in quality! Talk about a dimensional character—teenage football player Hampton is such a real and unique person, his voice colored by a regional tone that simply adds to the storytelling.

This is how the book begins:

I done it. I stopped time.
Every single player on that football field locked up stiff as them wax figures they got over in the Pawtuska Wild West Wax Museum. Made quite a picture, the stadium lights blazing overhead like fractured stars and the football froze slick and hard as a rocket against the night sky, our outside linebacker's fingers stretching just an inch too short to do a thing but let it fly over. I had to admit it was a thing of pure beauty, that pass, even if it was the enemy quarterback that thrown it. Tight spiral. Perfect arc. That boy had talent. But, sorry to say, it wasn't going to be enough. Not with me freezing time like I could.
Course, time didn't really stop. I didn't wave no magic wand or poof out a cloud of fairy dust or crank up some science-fiction machine with spinning gears and flashing lights on it. Thing was, I'd focus so hard that I'd squinch everything down so it seemed like time froze just long enough for me to look and see what I'd have to do next. That was my talent, the one and only thing I knew how to do better than anyone else around.

Hampton plays football on a virtually unbeatable high school team because his best friend Blaine and Blaine's father have taught him to play hard and well. Over the years, Hampton has relied heavily on those relationships, with his own father gone and his mother largely unavailable. But during Hampton's senior year, he finds himself becoming aware of a disconnect between his vision of the world and Blaine's outlook on life. Hampton thinks of himself as slow, but he's starting to realize that it's not because he's stupid; instead, he mulls things over. Unlike Blaine, Hampton has trouble putting his thoughts into words on the spot.

Hampton gradually becomes disillusioned with being a follower, particularly Blaine's follower. The fact that Hampton has turned out to be a very good football player, while Blaine is held back by an untreated knee injury, is one reason for the conflict—a frustrated and envious Blaine puts a strain on Hampton's straightforward loyalty with his increasingly irrational demands. Among other things, Blaine tries to put a stop to Hampton's interest in a girl Blaine feels isn't sufficiently popular and good-looking. But Hampton's relationship with Sara helps him think in new ways and break Blaine's hold over him. Hampton wisely realizes that he can love football and play to win without neglecting other possibilities and joys in life.

All of this growth is shown in the context of Hampton and Blaine's activities at school, on dates, and especially during football games. The sports scenes are especially well written, given greater meaning by Hampton's take on the game. (I like how Hampton ruefully contrasts his ability to make exactly the right moves in football with his inability to say the right things in social settings.)

The book's pivotal moment shows Hampton, moved by his deep loyalty to his friend, doing something that infuriates Blaine even as it saves him from himself. In a very satisfying evolution, seemingly passive Hampton becomes the action-taker—and we realize that his integrity has given his "still waters" choices increasing power, in contrast to Blaine's frenetically petty mistakes. I highly recommend Knights of the Hill Country. When I updated my program's library, I didn't find very many excellent sports-centered YA novels, but this one definitely earned a place on that shelf.

Today, I'm spotlighting Knights of the Hill Country only partly because it makes the perfect companion piece to Catherine Murdock's Front and Center. This book is one of those overlooked gems, and I want to bring it to your attention. Hampton Green isn't as flashy as an Alex Rider or an Edward Cullen, but spending time with him leaves you feeling a new respect for the quiet kid who in another book might have been a secondary character. In the right hands, like Catherine Murdock's and Tim Tharp's, these subtler characters leave you thoroughly entranced, rooting with everything you've got for them to win the game of life.