It’s shaping up to be a rotten summer for 10-year-old Rusty, a sailing buff who lives on an island off the New England coast. He’s just flunked math and has to go to summer school. His older sister is bossier than ever. Worst of all, his mom is far away on the mainland—undergoing treatment for her sudden, confusing, and exhausting “sadness”—while his dad struggles to keep the household together. Rusty’s only refuge is in caring for and teaching himself to sail a small, beloved sailboat.
While working on his boat at the village dock one evening, Rusty meets Hazel, a feisty old lady in a wheelchair. Hazel, a local artist from an old sailing family, asks—no, demands—that Rusty take her sailing. He refuses. She argues. And an unlikely friendship begins.
Hazel hires Rusty to help her with household tasks on summer afternoons. Between cleaning, painting, and cutting weeds, Rusty bonds with Hazel over shared lunches, watermelon seed spitting, and their mutual love of sailing. When Rusty does eventually take Hazel sailing, they come to better know and feel what connects them, even as her life nears its end and his is just beginning. Into the Wind is a poignant story about loss and love in a boy’s life, and the surprising and sustaining bonds that can grow between the old and young.
Thirteen-year-old Satoshi Matsumoto spent the last three years living in Atlanta where he was the star of his middle-school baseball team—a slugger with pro potential, according to his coach. Now that his father’s work in the US has come to an end, he’s moved back to his hometown in rural Japan. Living abroad has changed him, and now his old friends in Japan are suspicious of his new foreign ways. Even worse, his childhood foe Shintaro, whose dad has ties to gangsters, is in his homeroom. After he joins his new school’s baseball team, Satoshi has a chance to be a hero until he makes a major-league error.
“A heart-warming story about a baseball player who learns that teamwork is much more important than being the star of the team. I loved the family dynamics and depiction of life, and especially baseball, in Japan.”—Shauna Holyoak, author of Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers (Hyperion, 2019)
“An engaging, sports-focused, family-driven Japanese spin on the new-kid-in-school narrative.”—Kirkus Reviews