Tangerine ANNOTATION
Twelve-year-old Paul, who lives in the shadow of his football hero brother Erik, fights for the right to play soccer despite his near blindness and slowly begins to remember the incident that damaged his eyesight.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A season with the toughest soccer team in the county gives a teen the confidence to stand up to his wicked brother. "Smart, adaptable, and anchored by a strong sense of self-worth, Paul makes a memorable protagonist in a cast of vividly drawn characters; multiple yet taut plotlines lead to a series of gripping climaxes and revelations. Readers are going to want more from this author."--Kirkus Reviews
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Living in surreal Tangerine County, Fla., a legally blind boy begins to uncover the ugly truth about his football-hero brother. PW praised Bloor for "wedding athletic heroics to American gothic with a fluid touch and flair for dialogue." Ages 11-up. (Sept.)
The ALAN Review - Cawood Cornelius
Tangerine is a town in Florida with problematic new housing developments, frequent lightning strikes, sinkholes, and muck fires. Seventh grader, Paul Fisher, his older brother and parents are leaving Texas for Tangerine, Florida where Paul's dad will take a job as a civil engineer. Paul, who is legally blind, enrolls at the middle school in town after his trailer classrooms at the first school are swallowed by a sinkhole. Paul, a soccer goalie, is in competition for his parents' attention with his older brother who is a football star. Football practice is not canceled even after one of the players is killed by lightning. Paul makes friends at the new school and learns some valuable lessons by working in the tangerine groves with his peers from the town school. Paul's brother's involvement in the death of his friends' uncle brings back memories of how he lost his vision. Tangerine is the first novel of Edward Bloor who taught middle and high school in Florida. It is written from Paul's point of view and rings true of the middle school experience. The unexpected plot twists keep the interest of the reader. Recommend this novel to students with an interest in soccer or students who move often.
VOYA - Brenda Moses-Allen
When Paul Fisher and his family move to Tangerine County, Florida, his life changes dramatically. Paul has lived his twelve years in the shadow of his football-playing brother, Erik. The boys' father seems to be reliving his life through Erik, steadily building the "Erik Fisher Football Dream." Unlike Erik, Paul is considered a geek by some of his classmates. He wears thick glasses to protect his eyes that were damaged when, at five years old, he looked at a solar eclipse without protective eyewear. Or so his parents and his brother have told him. Paul resists being labeled "legally blind" because he really can see. In fact, he sees more than his parents realize. Tangerine County is full of surprises. Underground fires cause Paul's neighborhood to smell of smoke and burnt rubber, and the residents accept the daily and dangerous thunderstorms as just a part of life. When a sink hole swallows the portable school buildings at Lake Windsor Middle School, Paul transfers to Tangerine Middle School, which is old and shabby-very different from Lake Windsor. He is determined to play goalie for the soccer team, but first he has to overcome his fear of the tough team captain, Victor. He also has to win the respect of the team, which includes girls, some of whom can play better than any players he has seen before. Paul gains self-confidence and makes new friends, but his loyalty to them is tested by Erik's menacing behavior. Erik's actions trigger haunting and vague memories that Paul cannot quite comprehend. This is an exciting, suspenseful, and thought-provoking book that should be a hit with soccer-playing middle schoolers. Recommended. VOYA Codes: 4Q 4P M J (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Broad general YA appeal, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8 and Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9).
Kirkus Reviews
A legally blind seventh-grader with clearer vision than most wins acceptance in a new Florida school as his football-hero older brother self-destructs in this absorbing, multi-stranded debut. Paul's thick lenses don't keep him from being a first-rate soccer goalie, but they do make him, willy-nilly, a "handicapped" student and thus, according to his new coach, ineligible to play. After a giant sinkhole swallows much of his ramshackle school, Paul is able to transfer to another school where, with some parental collusion, he can keep his legal status a secret. It turns out to be a rough place, where "minorities are in the majority," but Paul fits himself in, playing on the superb soccer team (as a substitute for one of the female stars of the group) and pitching in when a freeze threatens the citrus groves. Bloor fills in the setting with authority and broad irony: In Tangerine County, Florida, groves are being replaced by poorly designed housing developments through which drift clouds of mosquitoes and smoke from unquenchable "muck fires." Football is so big that not even the death of a player struck by lightning during practice gets in the way of NFL dreams; no one, including Paul's parents, sees how vicious and amoral his brother, Erik, is off the field.
Smart, adaptable, and anchored by a strong sense of self-worth, Paul makes a memorable protagonist in a cast of vividly drawn characters; multiple yet taut plotlines lead to a series of gripping climaxes and revelations. Readers are going to want more from this author.
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