THE AUTHOR

Duncan Tonatiuh's novel centers on the Walthorne North Cougars and Walthorne South Panthers, two middle school basketball teams whose crosstown rivalry has defined the town of Walthorne for years, following star players like Austin Chambers as the pressure to become a standout mounts and a young reporter starts asking the questions the team would rather go unanswered. Amulet Books published this 200-page hardcover in 2025, and readers have rated it 4.8 on Goodreads out of about 5,000 ratings. The catalog lists it for ages 4 to 8, though a plot built around obsession with stardom and journalistic ethics reads considerably older than that, so it's worth previewing before handing it to a child at the young end of that range.

The story runs on two parallel pressures: the athletes caught between healthy competition and dangerous obsession, and the reporter whose job is to print what turns up regardless of who it embarrasses. That gives a reader two different doors into the same conflict, so a kid who cares about basketball and a kid who cares about fairness and truth-telling can both find their footing here. It lands hardest with a young reader who's already sensing that not everyone around them, coaches, teammates, even friends, plays by the rules they claim to believe in.