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Summary
Summary
#1 New York Times bestseller Mike Lupica asks the question: If a million dollars was at stake, could you make the throw?
Nate Brodie is nicknamed "Brady" not only for his arm, but also because he's the biggest Tom Brady fan. He's even saved up to buy an autographed football. And when he does, he wins the chance for something he's never dreamed of--to throw a pass through a target at a Patriots game for one million dollars.
Nate should be excited. But things have been tough lately. His dad lost his job and his family is losing their home. It's no secret that a million dollars would go a long way. So all Nate feels is pressure, and just when he needs it most, his golden arm begins to fail him. Even worse, his best friend Abby is going blind, slowly losing her ability to do the one thing she loves most--paint. Yet Abby never complains, and she is Nate's inspiration. He knows she'll be there when he makes the throw of a lifetime.
Mike Lupica's latest sports novel is also his most heartwarming.
"Lupica's football action engages, and his delineation of the athlete's thought process and emotional highs and lows of competition feels visceral and real." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Lupica explores the themes of believing in yourself and handling pressure. Teens who love sports fiction . . . will find this book a rapid, enjoyable read." -- VOYA
"Lupica injects plenty of suspenseful sports action into the plot and creates a cast of uniformly likable characters whose faith in teamwork and in each other ultimately earns handsome rewards for all. A natural for graduates of Matt Christopher's sports stories." -- Booklist
Author Notes
Michael Lupica (born on May 11, 1952 in Oneida, New York) is an American newspaper columnist. At the age of 23, Lupica began his newspaper career covering the New York Knicks for the New York Post. In 1977, he became the youngest columnist ever at a New York newspaper when he started working for the New York Daily News. He has also written for numerous magazines during his career including Golf Digest, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, ESPN: The Magazine, Men's Journal and Parade. In 2003, he received the Jim Murray Award from the National Football Foundation. He has been a television anchor for ESPN's The Sports Reporters and hosted his own program The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN2.
Lupica has written both fiction and non-fiction books. His novels include Dead Air; Limited Partner; Jump; Full Court Press; Red Zone; Too Far; Wild Pitch; and Bump and Run. He also writes the Mike Lupica's Comeback Kids series. He co-wrote autobiographies with Reggie Jackson and Bill Parcells and collaborated with William Goldman on Wait Till Next Year. His other non-fiction works include The Summer of '98; Mad as Hell: How Sports Got Away from the Fans and How We Get It Back; and Shooting from the Lip.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 2005, an army veteran won $1 million by throwing a football through a target during a halftime show at a college football game. Lupica (The Big Field) inserts a 13-year-old in the contestant role and moves the action to Massachusetts, where QB Nate Brodie stars for his eighth-grade team and idolizes the New England Patriots' Tom Brady. The pressure to win is intense-Nate's father has lost his job, the house is close to foreclosure, and his best friend, Abby, needs money to go to a special school since she is rapidly going blind. Though the entire cast is a bit too perfect, many kids will relate to Nate's fears about his family's finances: "You were going along, having what felt like a pretty cool life, and then all of a sudden came the economy trying to wreck everything." The ups and downs of Nate's peewee football team provide sports play-by-play, but the thread that will pull readers through is whether Nate can save his and Abby's families with one well-aimed spiral on Thanksgiving night. Ages 10-up. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Conflicts between head and heart trouble an eighth-grade football star in Lupica's latest smoothly crafted sports tale. No sooner is quarterback Nate picked in a drawing to try for a million-dollar prize on national TV by tossing a football through a small target than his erstwhile-brilliant passing game goes down the tubes. Knowing that his parents are both working multiple jobs to make ends meet, and also that Abby, his very best friend, girlfriend, and a gifted artist, is losing her eyesight, Nate realizes that he should be putting his own problems in perspective but still, as his team finds itself locked in a series of unnecessarily close gridiron contests, he sinks into a steady state of confused dejection. Will his arm come around in time, and if it does, what will he do with the money? Lupica injects plenty of suspenseful sports action into the plot and creates a cast of uniformly likable characters whose faith in teamwork and in each other ultimately earns handsome rewards for all. A natural for graduates of Matt Christopher's sports stories.--Peters, John Copyright 2009 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-8-Lupica delivers another smooth, well-paced, character-driven novel. Thirteen-year-old Nate Brodie's life would seem to be the stuff of adolescent boys' dreams: he is the star quarterback of his school football team and has a great relationship with his best friend and soulmate, Abby McCall. However, all is not smooth sailing. The Brodies are in danger of losing their home in the economic downturn, and Abby's eyesight is failing due to a rare congenital disease. Nate thinks he may have the opportunity to solve all of his problems when he wins the chance to make a million dollars by throwing a football through a small target during halftime at a pro football game. Unfortunately, his quarterbacking skills suddenly and mysteriously desert him just as he is preparing for his big moment. With the support of his family and friends, he fights his way back and regains the confidence he needs to face the challenges in his life. While the serious issues raised about the effects of economic uncertainty on families are resolved a tad too easily, youngsters are likely to accept this as just a good, entertaining read.-Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
No matter how complicated things get, Nate Brodie, 13, can always count on the power and accuracy of his football arm. Until, suddenly, he can't, just when he's won the opportunity to score $1,000,000 if he can throw a football through a 20-inch hole during the televised halftime break at a Patriots game. Normally, this feat, though difficult, would be within his remarkable abilities, and he would find fun in the challenge. But tension has been building for a while, sapping his confidence, and his arm is really showing it. The recession has taken a toll on the Brodies, and Nate's family, now in financial distress, could really use the money. Nate is also upset because his adored best friend Abby is rapidly going blind. Sadly, Abby is both a perfect and perfectly unbelievable character, and the scenes with her are mawkish and icky. Still, Lupica's football action engages, and his delineation of the athlete's thought process and emotional highs and lows of competition feels visceral and real. (Fiction. 10 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 This was always the best of it for Nate Brodie, when he felt the slap of the ball in his hands and began to back away from the center, when he felt as if he could see the whole field, and football made perfect sense to him. Sometimes when you were thirteen nothing seemed to make sense, and the world came at you faster and trickier than flying objects in a video game. It was never like that for him in football. Never. Nate had been having more and more trouble figuring out his world lately, especially with everything that had been happening to his family. School was school--he tried hard, but there were times he just felt lost, in search of answers that wouldn't come. And no matter how hard he tried, how hard he could try, he was never going to make sense out of what was happening to his friend Abby. But on a Saturday morning like this, underneath all the sun and blue sky, with the guys in the line already into their blocks and Nate feeling as if he had all day to throw the ball--feeling that weird calm he always felt in the pocket--he had all the answers. Football was like this for Nate Brodie. As he scanned the field now, he recognized one of those answers he instinctively knew. Pete Mullaney, his favorite receiver, was about to break into the clear. Once he did that, Nate knew Pete was going to run all day. When it was just Nate and Pete and some of the other guys on the team playing touch football in the empty lot next to Nate's house, they called this play "Hutchins-and-Go." One day Nate had told Pete to fake toward the Hutchins' house, the one on the other side of the lot, fake like he was running a sideline pattern in that direction, and then, as soon as the guy covering him bit, Pete was supposed to plant his outside foot and spin and take off down the sidelines. The play had just always been called Hutchins-and-Go after that. Nate watched as Pete sold his fake now, sold it like he was selling candy, didn't rush, even turned and looked back for the ball. That was when the defensive back on him committed, turned, and looked for the ball himself. Only Pete was gone. And the ball wasn't coming, at least not yet. Now it was just a question of what kind of throw Nate wanted to make. Because with the kind of arm he had--his buds and teammates always called him "Brady," knowing that Tom Brady was Nate's all-time favorite player--there were a couple of ways he could go. Nate could put a lot of air beneath the ball, really hang it up there and let Pete use those jets of his to run under it. Or Nate could gun one right now, throw one of those dead spirals that was the same as one of his football fastballs, put so much sting and hurt at the end of the pass that Pete sometimes said he wished he was allowed to wear a catcher's mitt. Nate decided to put this one way up there. Moon shot. He rolled to his right now, feeling pressure coming from his left, a right-handed quarterback's blind side, without actually seeing it. But just to make sure, to know exactly how much time he had, he shot a quick look over his shoulder and saw that the Hollins Hills' nose tackle had cleared Malcolm Burnley, Nate's center and the best blocker Valley had, on an outside route and was coming hard, thinking he might have a shot at getting his first sack of the day. Nate knew he didn't. In no hurry, Nate kept moving toward the sideline, toward the Valley bench, almost feeling as if he were floating. Having cleared the pocket completely, a nice patch of open green waited for him a few yards in front of Coach Rivers. He stopped now, planting, making sure to square his shoulders so he didn't drop his arm angle and sidearm the ball, setting himself on his back foot, carrying the ball high. The throwing mechanics that Coach said you pretty much had to be born with. And he let the ball rip. Knowing that the cornerback who had been covering Pete was never going to catch up with him and that the Hollins Hills safety had no chance of getting over to the sideline in time. He watched the ball like it was on a string, like one of those perfect casts his dad used to make across the water when the two of them still had time to go fishing together, before his dad began working all the time. He hoped his mom was getting this on the video recorder that was on its last legs and had been for a while, because his dad--working a double shift on Saturdays now--wasn't here to see it in person. The ball came down into Pete Mullaney's hands, Pete in perfect stride, just crossing the Hollins Hills 10-yard line. Pete pressed the ball to the front of his white uniform with those sure hands of his and crossed the goal line. Then he turned and just tossed the ball to the referee, because if you played on a team with Nate Brodie, if he was the one throwing you the ball, you knew enough not to do some kind of crazy touchdown dance afterward. You could be happy, just not happy enough to show the other team up. Nate was running down the sideline now, almost as fast as Pete just had. All the things that were confusing about his thirteen-year-old life lately--the things that made him sad and just plain mad once he got away from a football field--Nate had left them all in his dust. By the time Nate got to Pete, the little wide receiver was on the Valley sideline, waiting for him with his arms stretched wide. Nate, taller than Pete by a whole helmet, grabbed him, picked him up, put him down just as quickly, as much celebration as he was going to allow himself, mostly because there was still some game left to play. Pete said, "That throw was legit." "You always say that," Nate said. "No, Brady, this time I really mean it. That throw was, like, righteous ." Nate laughed now, couldn't help it. "I had the wind behind me." Pete Mullaney shook his head, smiling from behind his face mask. "Dude," he said, "as far as I can tell, your arm is pretty much where the wind starts ." Nate ran over to Coach Rivers then, to get the play Coach wanted them to run on the conversion. Then he ran back on the field and told his teammates he was faking to LaDell and then taking it in himself, on a roll to his left. Nobody touched him. Valley was up 22--7. They all knew the game was over, even with the clock showing two minutes, straight up, left. He and Pete ran off the field together, knowing that the forty-yarder they'd just hooked up on had put this one in the books. When Nate got back to the bench, Coach Rivers gave him a simple handshake. "A Brady throw all the way," he said. "I wish," Nate said. "I'm serious," Coach said. "Biggest throw of the season." For now, Nate thought. For now. Excerpted from Million-Dollar Throw by Mike Lupica All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
