Boost Paperback – June 10, 2010

I teach Language Arts to 6th graders. This one explores enhancement drug use among high school athletes. The main character is a basketball star. She does not use enhancement drugs, but is accused when someone else on her team plants them in her gym bag. It is rare to find a good book featuring female athletes, like this one. I ordered this copy because my original classroom copy is worn out. This novel has a good message and the basketball players love it especially.

My 9yr. Old enjoyed reading.

It was a very good book. It was full of some betrayal and victory moments. I really dont read a lot of books but I just couldn't stop reading this one. I would consider this book to any person.

I love all the suspense that was going on throughout the book. It grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go until the final page

This is a great book for girls who love sports. Savvy Christopher, 13 has just moved to Rhode Island from New Mexico. She and her sister Callie are in sports. Savvy is a basketball player, its her passion pretty much. Callie is a gymnist and a cheerleader. Over the summer Callie has gained weight do to being depressed that she had to move away from her hometown, big house, and friends. Savvy is trying out for U-18 Fire basketball team. She makes the team, but her coach and the other players are hard on her because she is younger than them and she has a lot of talent. Well Savvy is at a game when a rival teammate finds a bag of steroids in her bag. She is investigated, and suspended from the team until further notice. She is not allowed to play in her teams tournament the next day. Savvy is having a drug test to prove those pills aren't hers. To find out if they are hers or not read this great book!

Explains my life in every way possible. Made me cry so so hard . Must read like now . 😘

In the book Boost, written by author Katy Mackel in 2008, a girl named Savvy Christopher goes through various obstacles in her life, that will truth will prevail in the end. Many times throughout the book Mackel tries to subliminally reveal the theme, doing so through speaking in first person of a thirteen year old girl. In the beginning of the book, Savvy and her older sister move to a new city, where each girl becomes involved in their favorite sport, basketball and cheerleading. As both struggle to get to the top of not only their game, but the social ladder as well, they find theme selves pushing harder and one even ends up going too far, trying to "boost" themselves. The author felt strongly about truth because she brought it out more than once throughout the book in a range of ways. For example, Savvy becomes close to a boy that she feels likes her back a s well, unfortunately she gets a rude wakeup call when she discovers him kissing her sister when she follows him into the woods. I also feel she wrote it to make her audience (young adult-girls) aware of the dangers that come with lying and trying to run from your faults. Like in the book when Savvy's coach tries to cover up a mistake he made in his earlier coaching career with trying to help one of his players "get ahead." Even through the book has a fairly happy ending, it still shows the conflicts that could easily be prevented if only certain precautions were taken. Since her writing is in first person, she allows you to really bond with the main character and the language she uses allows her young audience to connect because it is fairly modern and youthful. I personally was able to connect with the story because, I like Savvy, play basketball, but I feel others too would be able to relate to it due to the side variations of outlooks found in the narrative. Overall I feel the book did a great job with interacting with the audience as well as making the reader feel like a part of the story. The only thing I wished the author did differently was to give a little more depth to the result of the girls relationship with Marc, the story's heartthrob, on the other hand, leaving it open also leaves various possibilities that aded to the book. All in all, the Book Boost leaves a positive taste in your mind.

Please check out my student-run blog - where all we do is review current teen fiction![...]Do you play basketball? I sure don't. Why you ask? Well, I'm as clumsy as an elephant trying to stand on one leg. But that didn't stop me from loving the book, Boost. Savvy Christopher and her family moved onto a ranch in Rhode Island, leaving behind their beautiful home in Texas and all their friends. I would hate moving that distance, wouldn't you? Anyways, Savvy is an amazing basketball player, and even though she's only 13, she's 6 foot 2. (Whoa, talk about your WNBA player!) Savvy plays basketball well enough to earn a spot on the U-18 team, The Fire. The season is going great for Savvy, until a rival player sees steroids in Savvy's gym bag. This is where everything starts going down hill. Savvy tries to keep everything under control, but it's as hard as splitting an atom into smaller and smaller pieces. The worst part is, she's not allowed to play in her team's basketball tournament because they need the drug testing results first, to see if she was really taking steroids or not. I was on the edge of my seat reading to find out if the pills were really Savvy's. What was that? You want to know if the pills were hers? Well, don't expect me to tell you! Go get that book and get reading!I can easily say that Kathy Mackel is an outstanding author. The beginning starts off automatically interesting, with Savvy trying out for The Fire. Her practice makes perfect, and what do you know, she's on the team! And she's not just on the team; she becomes the star player of the team. This book gave me a mixture of feelings at all different points. Happy, mad, frustrated, giggly, depressed, heart broken and most of all... ecstatic! I was mostly ecstatic throughout the book because there were so many points that I wanted to jump and scream for joy. When they won their first game against Power, I knew then and there that no one could beat them. At many points I wanted to hop into the book and be a character, because it seemed like the characters in the book had more fun than real people. Bottom line, this book was stupendous in so many different ways. As you could see, I loved this book to the bottom of my heart.Reviewed by Megan C.