Tim Tingle's No Name series has quite a few more books. I was only able to read these three, the ones my library has. I entered the series mid-way, with Name Your Mountain, and had to go back and read the first.
They all feature basketball, which is always a plus around our house, and they're super short -- some less than 150 pages, even though they're young adult (YA). They're what I'd call hi-lo readers, high interest, low reading level, so they're super accessible to all readers.
They feature a Choctaw freshman in high school whose father is abusive, but basketball, a tight knit community and determination stops the cycle of family dysfunction.
This is the fifth book in this series, I think, although it's the first I read. The author, Tim Tingle, does a great job of jumping into the story and as a reader, I didn't feel like I needed the other four to get into the story.
First let me describe the physical appearance of the book. It was so different from all the others on the library YA display shelf it literally stopped me in my tracks. It's small -- 7" by 4 ¾". It's super slim, 144 pages of text, so about 72 printed pages, total. Great for struggling readers who can get overwhelmed by a 2" thick spine and 400+ pages of text.
It also has a rather simple black and white cover -- a car driving on the road up top, and below a basketball player driving past a defender on the court. My son, a high school junior basketball player, saw the "driving" parallel immediately and said, "I appreciate that."
The characters are all Native and on their high school team, the Panthers. The story is closely tied to basketball.
The main character is Choctaw, Bobby Byington. He's dealing with his own father recuperating from alcohol addiction. But a fellow teammate, a Cherokee, is worried his father, a prominent prosecutor, fell from a ladder -- but that the fall may not have been an accident. It may have been an attempt on his life by one of the numerous people he's put behind bars over the years.
Police come to the hospital room with questions and put a watch on the Mackeys house, but they're all worried the violence could spill over to other members of the team. Fortunately, the Panthers' Coach Robison is more than just a coach, he's like family, and fully briefed on what's happening.
When someone throws a firebomb into the player's house while his mom and Coach are there, Coach takes the boy into hiding in the Ozark mountains. Bobby schemes ways the rest of the team can help out, namely by installing a camera in the backyard and using a teammate's parent's lawn service to make the installation look like routine lawn care.
Then Bobby and another teammate, whose father owns the lawn care business, are playing basketball on an outdoor court when a State of Oklahoma van with several men in uniforms (read: inmates) arrives. The men play ball at the other end of the court and make "ladder" and falling from a roof jokes, and this piques Bobby's attention.
This book is so short, and the story moves so fast, I won't say any more or I'll spoil it.
Just know, this is a great, fast-paced story using a high-interest topic -- basketball -- to grab and hold readers' attentions. It's packaged in such a way that it's not intimidating to struggling readers at all.
For all these reasons and more, we loved it! Enjoy.
This is the first book in the series, and after reading Name Your Mountain, I went back and read all the ones my library had.
This is the story of 9th grade Choctaw Bobby's escape from his abusive alcoholic father by digging a hole in his backyard, covering it with a door and piles of leaves, and living in the hole for weeks.
He gets help from some thoroughly unexpected places: the girl next door, his best friend Johnny, and the coach of the high school basketball team.
The coach invites Bobbyto play on the team. Coach Robison is also a member of the community and recognizes what Bobby's father's going through. More importantly, Coach Robison realizes how it's impacting Bobby.
He tells Bobby the story of No Name, a Choctaw youth who earns his name on his own terms. It's the metaphor for Bobby's story, but as the series progresses, I can see how the author uses it with the other boys on the team, as well.
With help from Coach and Johnny, Bobby and his dad come to a new fragile sense of trust in each other, and Bobby's father starts on his long road to recovery.
In this third book in the series, Bobby helps teammate Lloyd Blanton this time. Lloyd's father is also an alcoholic, and Bobby and his dad are the hope Lloyd needs to get through a particularly rough patch with his father. That and Coach Robison's guidance.
There's also basketball to be considered. The boys are freshmen on the team, and they have to earn their places with the upperclassmen – the seniors – on the court. And this time Bobby's girlfriend, Faye, faces her school bully. .
This is the shortest of the series' books I read. At 136 pages, it's a little more than 70 printed pages long, including a note from the author at the end, making it a slim, accessible read for all.
Enjoy!
