Jacquetta Nammar Feldman

This novel is a 2024 Lone Star selection. Overall, it was a perfectly fine book. If you live in Texas or you really enjoy baseball, you'll be drawn more to this book.

Sammy-Matty represent a set--twins--but suddenly they've become individuals: Sammy and Matty. Sammy doesn't know how to handle life not knowing what her twin is thinking. She feels adrift. It all started a few months ago when they were winning their baseball game with Matty pitching a perfect game. When the next inning starts, there's no Matty. Everyone wonders where he's gone and eventually texts his mom that he walked home and doesn't want to play anymore. The team ends up losing the game and Sammy cannot understand what happened. The Puttermans LIVE baseball--from playing it to watching the Houston Astros. Shortly afterward this huge change in their lives, Hurricane Harvey hits Houston. The Puttermans wait as long as they can and have to kayak out of their home, losing almost everything.

Not only does Matty quit baseball and the family loses their home, but now Sammy must room with her cousin Becky. Yep, the entire family--the four Puttermans, their neighbor with her cat, and the grandparents move into another Putterman's home. That's a lot of people. Although they used to be close, it seems that Becky and Sammy have little in common now. Becky wants to be a social media presence. Her schtick is to dress up her cat to create scenes, photogram them, and put them on social media. Everyone just says that Becky is up playing with her cat. No one really supports her endeavor. Sammy only wants to play and talk baseball. What on earth will they talk about? After Matty walked off the field, he remains pretty much silent, refusing to support the Astros or play baseball or talk. He holes up in his uncle's library (aka man cave) pretending not to read a book about Sandy Koufax, another Jewish baseball player or turn on his cell phone to read any texts from his best friend, Ethan. Oddly, Becky gets Matty involved in her cat photography; he finds himself impressed with her skill and creativity. As he is an artist, he can add and relate to Becky.

Once school begins, the kids begin to start their journeys to a new selfhood. They are required to write a journal to help with their emotions. Even their teacher lost her house, so they need a way to cope with all of the changes. Matty gets permission to write a graphic novel because he prefers to display emotions with pictures. Becky is the last one to really try to do any self reflection. Her mother continually shakes her head in disappointment over Becky's inability to sympathize for others or see beyond her own world. The best part of the fall is that the Astros are doing great! They end up making it to the World Series. The other great event happening is Becky's bat mitzvah. The problem remains that all of the Puttermans are more interested in baseball than Becky's big weekend.

Overall, the book is about strength and resilience, from small things such as sharing a room to leaving room for other peoples' talents to listening to others, to accepting others, to sticking together no matter what. The goal is to come together to support one's family and, yes, even one's baseball team. After the devastation of the hurricane, Houston is wounded. What brings them together is baseball. The Puttermans don't falter in support for the Astros. They do falter a bit with Becky and need to remember that even Koufax refused to play in the World Series during a Jewish holiday. Supporting Becky is truly more important. Becky needs to see beyond herself. She realizes that we are being tested all of the time. How we handle it and what we learn is what's important. We need to show up. We need to face the truth. Yes, even Matty's reason for leaving baseball resolves. Returning to baseball becomes his test. It's a good book although I think it could have been shorter. They're also lucky that they have money, for it makes rebuilding and going to ballgames affordable. Some readers will wonder how they can afford all of these changes, which I think is a realistic thought. It's a solid book set in Texas by a Texan with a good lesson.… (more)

Yasmeen Khoury is opposed to her family's move from Detroit to San Antonio, but she doesn't have a choice - and her parents and two younger siblings treat it like a big happy adventure. For Yasmeen, it means she has to start seventh grade without her best friend Dina, in a new place where Arab-Americans are a minority (and even majority-minority Hispanic people aren't always treated well, as she eventually learns from her new friends Esme and Carlos). Yasmeen has a rough transition into the new school; her favorite part is Math Lab, but the teacher is her neighbor Mr. Cohen, which Yasmeen knows her dad won't like, so she lies about it - and strikes up a tentative friendship with Mr. Cohen's daughter Ayelet. Can a Palestinian-Lebanese-Arab-American and a Jewish Israeli-American be friends in Texas, while violence flares in Jerusalem? Yasmeen and her friends of different backgrounds educate each other about the Holocaust, the Nakba, and the Alamo, and learn to embrace their identities and stand up for what they believe in.

Quotes

...but I still don't understand. Other than Native people who've always lived here, didn't everone in America's family come from somewhere else once? (21)

...no one has noticed that I'm miserable, that this move is an exciting adventure for everyone but me. (35)

Logic problem, p. 118-119

...where my family's from has everything to do with me, and at the same time, it has nothing to do with me. (143)

Finally, I've had enough of her not noticing how I feel. I've had enough of her making choices for me without even asking. (159)

"Real friends stand up for what's right if something bad is happening. They always have your back." (Ayelet to Yasmeen, 225)

How can two people standing in the same place see something so differently? How can history be different depending on who you ask? (234)

The only problem is - what I think is right and what my parents think is right seem like two different things. (252)

"Your culture makes you who you are." (Carlos to Yasmeen, 262)

Every wave of violence closes my family's hearts tighter and tighter. (282)

Maybe it doesn't matter what language you dream in, after all. Maybe it's only important that you dream. (317)

...I understand: sadness is sadness and loss is loss. They're the same for everyone, no matter how or where they happen. (322)

"Maybe peace will begin here, with us." (336)

...maybe words that hurt always matter. (343)

I've learned a lot about second chances...for them to work, someone has to be brave enough to give them, but someone has to be brave enough to accept them, too. (347)

Maybe things that seem too different or too much the same at first start to come together after a while, if only you look a little closer. (351)… (more)