Edenville Owls (review)

Bobby Murphy and his eighth-grade buddies on the Edenville Owls basketball team are up against a definite challenge—they have only five members, no coach, and little knowledge of game strategy beyond a couple of flashy trick shots. Their problems pale, though, in comparison to those of their new teacher, Miss Delaney, who is being harassed by a man who waylays her after school, and who shows up in class with bruises on her face. But Bobby is a guy who likes to figure things out, and he attacks both problems with the same methodical, if unorthodox, precision. On the basketball front, he simply attends lots of well-coached games at other schools and drills his friends on what he's observed. To save Miss Delaney, though, he defies her wishes and the law, breaking into her apartment, spying from the attic on her shady visitor, and infiltrating the white supremacist group that her tormentor runs under an assumed name. The setting, a small Massachusetts town right after World War II, is integral to the plot—the neo-Nazi cant of "Reverend" Tupper (who turns out to be Miss Delaney's ex-husband) is baffling to a boy who's grown up red, white, and blue in the war, and the probability of the teacher's losing her job when her marriage becomes known is all too real. The action, however, is predictably scripted, and a subplot involving Bobby's romantic feelings toward an old pal, Joanie, is superfluous and awkwardly drawn. Still, short chapters, plenty of dialogue, and an intriguing combination of sports, mystery, and social fanaticism make this an enticing choice for reluctant middle-school readers.