Losers Bracket

Gr 8 Up—The last time Annie Boots was removed from her biological mother's care it seemed pretty final—even supervised visits were off the table. A talented student athlete, tough-talking Annie insists on spreading herself thin playing up the loser's bracket in local basketball tournaments, and joining sports she's not even interested in, in hopes of creating as many opportunities as possible for her bio mom and sister to come see her on neutral ground. This strains her relationship with her straitlaced foster family, and yields mixed results. When Annie's nephew goes missing at one of her swim meets, the systems that have defined Annie and her sister's life—bio families, foster families, social services, law enforcement, and the kindness of strangers—slowly grind together to find the boy, and figure out what kind of home he'll come home to. Annie's voice is strong and often bracing, her observations about her both of her families range from cruel to tender, sometimes in the same paragraph. Crutcher has a lot of messages to send about nature verses nurture, and about the system as a whole, some of which are presented organically, others dropped into awkward soliloquies. The plot takes some wild and soapy twists and turns near the end, but the resolution is realistically uneasy and complex.