Summer Ball

by Mike Lupica (Author)

Reading Level: 6th − 7th Grade
The sequel to the #1 New York Times bestseller Travel Team!

When you're the smallest kid playing a big man's game, the challenges never stop--especially when your name is Danny Walker. Leading your travel team to the national championship may seem like a dream come true, but for Danny, being at the top just means the competition tries that much harder to knock him off. Now Danny's heading to Right Way basketball camp for the summer, and he knows that with the country's best players in attendance, he's going to need to take his game up a notch if he wants to match up. But it won't be easy. Old rivals and new battles leave Danny wondering if he really does have what it takes to stand tall.

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School Library Journal

Sports fans will relish the on-court action, expertly rendered in Lupica's taut prose. This worthy sequel to Travel Team should earn a wide audience.

ALA/Booklist

Lupica is at his best when he puts the reader right in the center of the action on the court. His game descriptions are fast, accurate, and exciting. Young sports-fiction fans will eat this up.

Review quotes

Praise for Summer Ball

"Lupica knows his basketball and knows how to spin a page-turner of a story. Those who enjoyed the first installment of Danny's story will be thrilled to read a sequel, and even those middle school readers who are not huge sports fans will want to cheer for Danny Walker, who proves that determination can be a whole lot bigger than height." -VOYA
Mike Lupica
Mike Lupica is one of the most prominent sportswriters in America and is the recipient of the prestigious Damon Runyon Award for excellence in journalism. His longevity at the top of his field is based on his experience and insider's knowledge, coupled with a provocative presentation that takes an uncompromising look at the tumultuous world of professional sports. Today he is a syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News, which includes his popular "Shooting from the Lip" column, which appears every Sunday.

He began his newspaper career covering the New York Knicks for the New York Post at age 23. He became the youngest columnist ever at a New York paper with the New York Daily News, which he joined in 1977. For more than 30 years, Lupica has added magazines, novels, sports biographies, other non-fiction books on sports, as well as television to his professional resume. For the past fifteen years, he has been a TV anchor for ESPN's The Sports Reporters. He also hosted his own program, The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN2.

In 1987, Lupica launched "The Sporting Life" column in Esquire magazine. He has published articles in other magazines, including Sport, World Tennis, Tennis, Golf Digest, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, ESPN: The Magazine, Men's Journal and Parade. He has received numerous honors, including the 2003 Jim Murray Award from the National Football Foundation.

Mike Lupica co-wrote autobiographies with Reggie Jackson and Bill Parcells, collaborated with noted author and screenwriter, William Goldman on Wait 'Till Next Year, and wrote The Summer of '98, Mad as Hell: How Sports Got Away from the Fans and How We Get It Back and Shooting From the Lip, a collection of columns. In addition, he has written a number of novels, including Dead Air, Extra Credits, Limited Partner, Jump, Full Court Press, Red Zone, Too Far and national bestsellers Wild Pitch and Bump and Run. Dead Air was nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best First Mystery and became a CBS television move, "Money, Power, Murder" to which Lupica contributed the teleplay. Over the years he has been a regular on the CBS Morning News, Good Morning America and The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour. On the radio, he has made frequent appearances on Imus in the Morning since the early 1980s.

His previous young adult novels, Travel Team, Heat, Miracle on 49th Street, and the summer hit for 2007, Summer Ball, have shot up the New York Times bestseller list. Lupica is also what he describes as a "serial Little League coach," a youth basketball coach, and a soccer coach for his four children, three sons and a daughter. He and his family live in Connecticut.

Classification
-
ISBN-13
9780142411537
Lexile Measure
910
Guided Reading Level
V
Publisher
Viking Books for Young Readers
Publication date
June 01, 2008
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV032020 - Juvenile Fiction | Sports & Recreation | Basketball
Library of Congress categories
-

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