Review of the Day: Slugfest by Gordon Korman

Slugfest
By Gordon Korman
Balzer and Bray (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$19.99
ISBN: 9780063238091
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

I have a problem. Not a huge problem. Not an insurmountable problem. It’s more of a wiggly, nagging, omnipresent problem that comes and goes but never quite disappears. Think of it like a sniffle that’s still around even on the hottest day in August. My problem involves librarians. You see, I’m a librarian myself, and each year I help run a committee at my library. The 101 Great Books for Kids list committee has one job and one job alone: Determine 101 books for children that are magnificent. It’s a tough job but somebody’s gotta do it. Fortunately, I have a team of highly skilled (and remarkably willing) participants at my library. Each month we read all the books we can on one genre or another (this month it’s fairytales/folktales/religious tales AND poetry AND graphic novels). The trouble comes when we have to read middle grade fiction. In layman’s terms, these are fictional books for kids between the ages of 9-12. Now I can get my fellow library workers to read almost every kind of book out there that there is, but the one thing that I cannot get them to read? Sports books. By gum, it’s like pulling teeth. You put a kid on cover of a book with a baseball/basketball/golf ball (for crying out loud) in their hand and that book will just sit and sit there, gathering dust. Now we know that there are kids out there that live for sports and we know that a fair chunk of those kids are readers. How the heck are we supposed to get them the books they need when we won’t read them ourselves? Fortunately, there is a solution to that problem, and his name is Gordon Korman. Adept at making books that are appealing to all kinds of people, even jaded library employees, he has done the impossible. Thanks to Slugfest, Korman has penned a book so enticing, so fun, so downright enjoyable, and so unapologetically sportsy, that it is impossible to resist. This is the sports book to rule them all. The book, quite frankly, that we’ve all been waiting for.

Yash is living a nightmare. Here he is, star player of Robinette Middle School, and he’s been playing on the high school’s JV teams for all of 8th grade. Now he’s been informed that a new law has ruined his life. Literally. Because he skipped PE class to play JV (at the school’s request, mind you), he needs to make up that gym credit in order to graduate. Worse, he’ll be spending his summer school with a bunch of kids who failed gym or who are, put another way, slugs. Add in the fact that their teacher is Mrs. Finnerty, a former Kindergartner teacher who has no problems with having them play baby games all day, and things couldn’t get worse. But Yash has no idea that these slugs? They might actually be the best friends he’s ever had.

Considering the sheer number of novels that Mr. Korman has published (his website suggests that it may be around 100), I cannot know whether or not this is the first book of his that includes a gym teacher as a particularly influential character. What I do know is that in his own life, a gym teacher was at least partially responsible for what may be the most auspicious children’s author career launch of all time. Just the other day I was speaking to a group of 2nd graders and some of them wanted to know if kids ever get books published. Should I have mentioned how Gordon Korman kick started his career at the precious age of 14 when a gym teacher filled in for an English teacher and told the kids to work on whatever they wanted? As Korman tells it himself, “That added up to a class period per day for more than four months. The result was my first novel, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING AT MACDONALD HALL.” Now in Slugfest we have another case of a teacher filling in, but in this particular situation it’s been flipped. Now instead of a gym coach working in an English class you’ve a retired Kindergarten teacher filling in as a gym coach. The script may be reversed, but as Korman learned oh so long ago, interesting things are capable of happening when you take people out of their comfort zones.

It occurs to me that this review you’re reading right now is of an auspicious persuasion. If Mr. Korman has written around 100 books, I have written at least 1,500 reviews. Want to know how many of those reviews were for Gordon Korman books? Precisely zero, my friends. Why? How? Do I have some longstanding antipathy or grudge towards Korman? Not in the least. Honestly, it’s probably a testament to his own success more than anything else. Generally speaking, I will review highly popular people from time to time, but the bulk of my energy comes when I look at authors that don’t already have this man’s longstanding presence on the children’s literary stage. I mean, Korman’s first book came out the same year that I was born. The man doesn’t need my help. Even so, I found myself inexplicably drawn to Slugfest. There was something about its storytelling. Its plucky narrators. And there was something impossibly comforting about how Korman laid out the plot. It’s familiar, yet you never feel bored or find yourself necessarily correctly predicting where it will go next.

Part of what makes the book so interesting is that in spite of that plot description I just wrote, the book is told in a variety of different voices. I listened to the audiobook of Slugfest and I never had difficulty figuring out who one character or another was. Korman does a great job of distinguishing each individual personality with a minimal number of words. For example, the character of Arabella at first seems to come off as one of my least favorite tropes in kids’ books: the do-gooder activist who puts protest before people. And Arabella plays that role for a good chunk of the book, no doubt. Reading through her sections, I was getting flashbacks to the evil EPA guy in Ghostbusters more than anything else. Then Korman switches gears mid-way through. Arabella starts to attain a little more complexity. A bit more of a personality. She gains a conflict of interest, and that changes things. Do I wish the conflict of interest didn’t involve falling in love? Heck to the yes, but it is what it is.

Truly the book’s greatest secret weapon is how expertly it makes the reader understand why people like sports. It taps into that fervor and love in a variety of different ways, and you’re there for it. It’s as if Korman is setting up every single argument and knocking them down one by one. And speaking of knocking things down, I was a little surprised to watch the man completely dodge, spin, and turn on a dime away from the whole football/concussion discussion. It does feel a little odd reading about an 8th grader who would give his right kidney to play football when we all know he heavy price that pays on young men. You would think the character of Arabella would bring that up herself, but nope. So, for its healthy appreciation of sports in general, I find it delightful. For its complete dismissal of the whole concussion thing? Maybe less so.

One question my fellow librarians and I asked about this book was its age range. Out of necessity it focuses squarely on a group of 8th graders who are a mere gym credit away from becoming high schoolers. Historically, if you wanted to write a book about teenagers, then that book’s publisher would insist upon marketing the book to teens. It’s only recently that I’ve seen this begin to change a little. The same year that Slugfest is coming out we’ve seen Louder Than Hunger by John Schu, which is about a 14-year-old, but is squarely aimed at the 9-12 year-old set. Then there’s Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renee Watson. It touches on some distinctly older themes, but also contains plenty of material that’s better suited for younger ages. It makes me wonder if all the recent doom and gloom talk about the death of the middle grade novel has had the unintended effect of loosening some of its old boundaries and parameters. Korman may be Korman, but could he have written this same book even ten years ago with the kids all the same age? We may never know.

As far as critiques go, I was a bit baffled as to why every single one of the slugs got to have their say in the course of the book with the exception of one. The character of Fiona has one single, distinguishing characteristic: she is short. And that one defining trait apparently means she does not rate her own voice. She is the sole slug to be kept completely silent throughout the book. As far as I can tell, she’s really only in the book at all for a single scene near the end, and even that could have been handed to another character (so long as that character was also short). I can’t help but feel like maybe there was a version of this book where Fiona not only got a lot more to do, but a lot more to say, only to have her storyline edited out somewhere in the process. I’ve no proof of that, mind you. It’s just a feeling.

I’m not saying that Slugfest is the holy grail that will cure all my librarians-won’t-read-sports-book woes. All that I’m saying is that maybe it’s the outlier that prevails against the odds. It does, after all, have a lot of points on its side. A well-known, respected author who knows from whence he writes. A plot that’s nothing but pure fun. A variety of voices. And, maybe most impressively, a defense of sports that may not win over its more ardent naysayers, but at least makes a fairly strong case for their existence at all. Is it a perfect book? By no means. But it’s fun, funny, and contains stronger writing than you may find in a whole host of books out for kids today. If that makes me a Slugfest fan, then so be it. I am a Slugfest fan. Give it a read. Maybe you’re one too.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2024, Review 2024, Reviews