APRIL 2018 - AudioFile
Sunny is the third winning character in Jason Reynolds's Track series. Sunny has always seemed to have a bright disposition, that is, until the day he inexplicably gives up on winning a track race. The move isn’t inexplicable to listeners, for narrator Guy Lockard reveals Sunny’s true thoughts and feelings as written in his journal. Lockard's voice clouds as Sunny recounts how he’s always thought of himself as a murderer because his mother died when she gave birth to him. He voices Sunny's confusion, angst, and anger with his inscrutable father. Lockard also captures Sunny's humor and joy when he dances and his adoration of language, especially, the sounds that flavor his witty writing. Lockard realizes Reynolds's rhythms and wordplay, fully expressing their dramatic potential. Engaging interviews with Reynolds and Lockard follow the audiobook. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
June 2018 - BCCB
Book Three of Reynolds’ Track series, with its focus on individual players and their personal struggles, does not disappoint. Fans will settle easily into the balance between field action, teammate interrelationships, Coach’s understated but effective methodology, and the open-ended conclusion underscoring the message that win/loss is less important in these players’ lives than camaraderie and family reconciliation.
July/August 2018 - Horn Book Magazine
The slow build of the story allows Sunny’s strengths and vulnerabilities to gain him a place in our hearts. When he finally throws the discus in competition—on the last page, no less—we are completely with him.
May 1, 2018 - Booklist *STARRED REVIEW*
Reynolds again uses his entrancing grasp of voice to pull readers into the heartbreaking world of the Track series. Sunny’s voice is deliberately more scattered and onomatopoetic than the series’ prior narrators, and there’s a musicality to the text, with words like “tickboom” and “hunger-growl.“ This series continues to provide beautiful opportunities for discussion about viewpoint, privilege, loss, diversity of experience, and exactly how much we don’t know about those around us.
APRIL 2018 - AudioFile
Sunny is the third winning character in Jason Reynolds's Track series. Sunny has always seemed to have a bright disposition, that is, until the day he inexplicably gives up on winning a track race. The move isn’t inexplicable to listeners, for narrator Guy Lockard reveals Sunny’s true thoughts and feelings as written in his journal. Lockard's voice clouds as Sunny recounts how he’s always thought of himself as a murderer because his mother died when she gave birth to him. He voices Sunny's confusion, angst, and anger with his inscrutable father. Lockard also captures Sunny's humor and joy when he dances and his adoration of language, especially, the sounds that flavor his witty writing. Lockard realizes Reynolds's rhythms and wordplay, fully expressing their dramatic potential. Engaging interviews with Reynolds and Lockard follow the audiobook. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2018-04-07
Sunny Lancaster is a home-schooled almost-13-year-old torn between duty to run and passion for dance in the latest compulsively readable installment of Reynolds' lauded Track series.On the surface, African-American Sunny appears to have a wealthy, comfortable life that his less-fortunate teammates on the Defenders cannot help but envy. Privilege, however, cannot hide pain, and Sunny feels smothered by guilt over his mother's death immediately after his birth and crushed beneath the weight of his father's expectations for him to become the marathon runner that his beloved mother no longer can be. Once again, Reynolds cements his reputation as a distinguished chronicler of the adolescent condition by presenting readers with a winsome-yet-complex character whose voice feels as fresh as it is distinctive, spontaneously breaking out into onomatopoeic riffs that underscore his sense of music and rhythm. Living in an empty house with colorless walls and unfulfilled familial expectations cannot dim the effervescent nature of a protagonist who names his diary to make it feel more personal, employs charts and graphs to help him find the bravery to forge his own path as a discus-throwing dancer, and finds artistic inspiration in the musical West Side Story. Defenders introduced in earlier novels receive scant treatment, but new characters, such as Sunny's blue-haired teacher/dance instructor, Aurelia, are vibrant and three-dimensional. Main characters' races are not explicitly mentioned, implying a black default.Another literary pacesetter that will leave Reynolds' readers wanting more. (Fiction. 10-14)