booked.jpg

Ideas & Inspiration for Booked

Find this title at a library near you.

From the author’s website
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…

Nick Hall lives and breathes soccer. But when he’s sidelined by an injury, his word-loving father takes the opportunity to try to instill a love of reading into his reluctant son. Nick’s mother leaves for a job out of state, he and his best friend hit the skids, he’s dealing with a bully, and on top of all of that, he has to navigate the highs and lows of a first crush.

With an impressive array of poetry styles—free verse, acrostics, haiku—and the pacing of a soccer match—at times leisurely and thoughtful, at others frenetic and heart-stopping— Booked(HMH BYR: April 5, 2016) is both poetry for Lionel Messi fanatics and a sports novel for those more likely to memorize a sonnet than kick a soccer ball. But what it is—at its rhythmic, loving heart—is a novel about a father and son, family and friendship, and the true power that words can have on and off the page.

Title-specific resources for your Book to Art Club:

Awards

  • Booklist 2016 Top 10 Books for Youth, Contemporary Middle-Grade Novels & Sports

  • Parents’ Choice Awards, Fiction Gold, Spring 2016

  • The Kirkus Prize 2016 Nominee, Young Readers

  • National Book Awards: Young People’s Literature, 2016 Longlist

  • ALA Notable Books for Children Nominee–Summer 2016, Fiction

  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2016, Middle-Grade

  • NCTE Notable Poetry List 2017, Verse Novels

  • Booklist 2016 Lasting Connections, Language Arts

  • ALSC Notable Children’s Books 2017, Older Readers

  • YALSA 2017 Best Fiction for Young Adults

  • YALSA 2017 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, Fiction

  • Brightly, 16 of the Most Exciting Middle Grade Books to Read in 2016

  • CSMCL Best Multicultural Books of 2016

  • 2016 Cybils Finalist, Poetry

  • ILA Young Adults’ Choices 2017 Reading List*

  • Children’s Literature Assembly, 2017 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts Award

About the suggested projects:
Booked is a poetry-laced, soccer and vocabulary themed coming of age story. Invent projects influenced by new vocabulary, varying styles of poetry and soccer.