Booked by Kwame Alexander

From Goodreads,

"Like lightning/you strike/fast and free/legs zoom/down field/eyes fixed/on the checkered ball/on the goal/ten yards to go/can’t nobody stop you/
can’t nobody cop you…
In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel THE CROSSOVER,  soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.  
This electric and heartfelt novel-in-verse by poet Kwame Alexander bends and breaks as it captures all the thrills and setbacks, action and emotion of a World Cup match!"

Goodreads - Booked

Favorite quote from Booked, 

Books are fun, Nicholas, he says,

they're like

amusement parks

for readers.

This book keeps with Kwame Alexander's writing style of verse.  This follows the story of a young kid named Nick who loves playing soccer.  His mom is very involved in his life and enjoys challenging him in soccer.  Nick's best friend also plays soccer and is always encouraging him to ask out the girl of his dreams.  As the book progresses we realize that not everything is perfect in Nick's world thanks to bullies and his parents splitting.  The book climaxes at the perfect time and leaves the reader hanging on every word at the end.

A student recommended The Crossover to me a while back.  I enjoyed it because it was written in verse and it made for a very quick read.  I figured I would also enjoy Booked by Kwame Alexander because it was written in the same format.  I was able to finish this book in just a few short hours.  I really love that Alexander writes books in verse.  I find it difficult to locate books in verse that also have topics students would be interested in.  Students love these types of books because they say that they are fast to read because they don't have a full page of words.  I always recommend verse novels to students who hate reading because I can tell them the pages are even full pages of words!  I do think that many of my students would connect more with The Crossover than Booked, simply because basketball is a bigger sport than soccer in the town I live in.  If there was a book about football then I can almost guarantee that all of my students would be reading it!  I definitely hope that he continues his writing style and eventually comes out with more books with more sports topics and hopefully some female lead characters.

This book wasn't nearly as captivating as The Crossover.  I didn't feel like I connected with any of the characters in this book.  One thing that really bothered me was the interaction between Nicholas, Coby, and the twins who were bullies.  There seemed to be a lot of potential for the bullying aspect, but there were only a couple encounters that happened.  I just felt like if Alexander was going to use the bullying card in this book that he should probably have written the twins in with a more important role and they should have been bullying more than they actually were.  Of course I'm not condoning bullying, but I feel like there was an opportunity for the bullies to do something severe and for Nick to take action on what happened.  I also don't feel like Nick should have just handled the bullying situation on his own.  I would have preferred that he had told an adult so that it could have been handled properly.  As a teacher we are constantly telling students to report things like this.  But then we have books where the main character isn't reporting anything happening.  This in turn puts it into students' heads that they don't need to report bullying or anything else because they can just take care of it themselves.  Alexander really dropped the ball on the bullying situation in my opinion.  He had a huge opportunity for the bullies to be real bullies who were constantly and consistently picking on Nick and there was the opportunity for Nick to handle it by telling an adult.

This book was not nearly as good as The Crossover was.  I was disappointed because I was hoping this book would be even better.  I didn't feel like I ever connected with any of the characters in this book.  For that I have to give the book 3 stars.  I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys soccer or anyone who has struggled with their parents splitting.