Skate Freak. (Orca Currents). Lesley Choyce. Victoria, BC: Orca, 2008. 108 pp., pbk. & hc., $9.95 (pbk.), $16.95 (hc.). ISBN 978-1-55469-042-8 (pbk.), ISBN 978-1-55469-043-5 (hc.). Grades 2-5 / Ages 7-10. Review by Maha Kumaran. **** /4 Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.

excerpt:

If I’d had any second thoughts, they were erased by Hodge’s performance. I nodded. I climbed up the shaky aluminum ladder and felt the gritty feel of the shingles under my feet. I looked across the street at the neighbor’s houses and saw a man and a woman standing in their front doorway pointing at me. I wondered if they might call William’s parents or even the cops.

 

Quinn Dorfman has just moved to the city from a small town named Willis Harbor. Apart from the move, the fact that his mother has left him, that his dad has no job and that his schoolmates call him “skate freak” have all shaken him up or, in his words, “knocked the wind” out of him.

     The good and bad happen in school. There is the skateboard locker girl, SLG for short, on whom he has a crush, and William Hodge, a bike hero who challenges Quinn to skate board off the roof of his house. Much to the reader’s shock, Quinn actually takes up on the challenge. What happens next? Does Quinn survive, and can he ever skate again? What about his thoughts of going back to Willis Harbor with SLG to skate on the ledges? What about his mom? Will she come back?

Recommended.

Maha Kumaran is a Virtual Reference Librarian in Saskatoon, SK.

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