Patina

Jason Reynolds's Patina is a fierce, funny running story for 11 year olds about a girl who absolutely hates coming second.

What happens

Patty runs the 800 metres. She's been doing it for three years and she has a system. Then at her first meet with her new team she comes second, and she's so cross she won't say a word for the rest of the meet.

She tells you straight out that she's a sore loser. That's the thing about Patty. She tells you everything, and she talks to you like a friend on the way home, slang and all.

Her life is a lot to carry. Her dad died in his sleep when she was six. Her mum has diabetes (Patty calls it "the sugar", like her mum does) and has lost both her legs to it. So Patty and Maddy, the baby sister she's always looked after, live with their uncle and aunt now.

Every Sunday Patty braids Maddy's hair, thirty braids and ninety red beads. Then they dress up and take Ma to church, where Patty dances in the aisle because Ma can't any more. It's one of the most loving scenes you'll read.

School is the other problem. She's the new girl at a posh all-girls academy full of "hair flippers" whose dads own boats. She's stuck in a history project group with girls who think Harriet Tubman is too serious.

Every chapter title is a line from Patty's TO DO list, and one of them is simply "Everything". It tells you a lot about how much she's holding up on her own.

The track is where she makes sense. It's where her teammates are, including Ghost, Lu and Sunny, and a coach who sees straight through her.

The sad parts are all backstory, and she tells them in her own way rather than dwelling on them. If your reader has lost a parent, or has someone poorly at home, some of it may land very close. For a lot of readers, though, it'll be the thing that makes them love her.

If your reader likes a hero with a big mouth and an even bigger heart, Patty is it. This is the second book in the Track series.

What to read next

If they haven't read the first, Ghost's own book is where the series starts, with a boy who knows a LOT of world records and eats sunflower seeds by the bag.