By My Brother's Side
Grade 1-5–NFL stars Tiki and Ronde Barber present sports fans with a sun-drenched childhood anecdote about perseverance. Although the twins were "born smaller than most babies," they grew up to be a rowdy pair. The boys never left one another's side until the summer when Tiki took a bad spill from his bike and broke his leg, forcing him to miss the entire baseball season. The narrative follows the siblings' agony during their summer-long separation and their eventual joy at being teammates again. Despite its lengthy, lackluster text and a somewhat anticlimactic ending, the authors' role-model status will attract an audience, and Root's soft, watercolor-and-gouache illustrations will capture readers' imaginations. Vibrant oranges and yellows suffuse the pages, creating a sense of nostalgia. Similar to Deloris and Roslyn M. Jordan'sSalt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream(S & S, 2000), the Barbers' tale will be a popular addition to sports collections.–Ann M. Holcomb, Los Angeles Public LibraryCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.