I think that people tend to think of readers as nerdy types who don’t want anything to do with physical activity, particularly sports. However, when I was a kid and wanted to kill a spare hour on a rainy day, I’d walk up the street to my public library, pull a Matt Christopher book from the shelf, and devour a sports story featuring kids playing on teams while battling personal issues.
Reading Seth McLane’s middle grade basketball story, GOOSH, brought me right back to my Matt Christopher reading days. However, McLane’s novel brings a bit more depth and detail to the table while expertly balancing the sports conflicts with his protagonist’s personal family drama. Below is my review of GOOSH followed by an interview with McLane about his book and his writing. Then, enter to win a signed copy and a sticker via the Rafflecopter form below!
GOOSH plot summary
Isaac Strawbridge is your typical teenage boy whose biggest concern seems to be growing hair under his arms so that he looks and feels older. Then, on his last day of summer vacation before he begins seventh grade, his parents drop a bombshell on him. Isaac’s mother has cancer. While her survival rate is high, the thought of his mother being sick consumes him.
To escape his troubles, Isaac spends a lot of time at a local park shooting baskets and preparing for the season ahead, desperate to make the school’s basketball team. While there, he encounters Mr. Brooks, an old man who lives nearby who offers pointers and helps improve Isaac’s skills. He also teaches him the word GOOSH, a made up word he uses to describe the feeling of making a basket.
It turns out Mr. Brooks is a former professional basketball player. He’s also been hired to coach the school’s basketball team.
While Mr. Brooks earns a reputation for being a drill sergeant, Isaac welcomes his tough love approach as well as his insistence on treating the team like a family and communicating. These are qualities he’s not getting at home as his sick mother stays shut up in her room, his father turns to alcohol to cope, and his little sister, Sammie, confides in their long-distance maternal grandmother.
One other person Isaac can confide in is his old friend, Libby. However, Libby is known as the weird girl in school, and Isaac is torn between protecting his reputation and being a good friend to her since she is so supportive of him.
Many of Isaac’s relationships are tested throughout the school year. He even finds his relationship with basketball being put on the line as school and homelife pressures come to a boil and his behavioral issues threaten his spot on the team to the point where not even Mr. Brooks may be able to help him out.
The story
GOOSH is a sophisticated yet age-appropriate sports drama that skillfully balances multiple conflicts, characters, and situations. The terrible timing of the news of Isaac’s mother’s cancer completely turns his world upside down. The sentence “Mom has cancer” plays in an endless loop in his brain. It mirrors that sense of powerlessness you have as a kid when the world is crumbling around you, and there’s nothing you can do about it except obsess over the awfulness.
That mindset spirals Isaac into an obsession with basketball. As a result, his grades fall, he gets into fights with a bully and fellow teammate, Jeremy, and he isolates himself from his friends.
One thing Isaac doesn’t do, though, is communicate his feelings to anyone outside of Mr. Brooks and Libby. As a result, that secretiveness begins to eat away at him until it begins to affect his position on the basketball team as well.
For non-basketball readers who may be leery to pick up a sports-themed book, there is plenty of basketball in the story. However, it’s weaved seamlessly into the plot and doesn’t overtake more than a few paragraphs at a time. You don’t need to be an expert to know what he’s working towards and how important it is to him.
For those who do love basketball, there’s plenty of references to do justice to the sport, its history, and the lessons that it teaches its players. It also helps to show how disciplined Isaac is when he wants to be. Basketball centers him and distracts him from reality in a healthy and even therapeutic way, and you will root for him to be able to keep it in his life.
The characters
The characters in this story are well-drawn with very distinct voices, mannerisms, and side plots to bring to the table. McLane is just as good at writing females as males and brings a lot of depth to even the most minor characters through their actions and language.
We tend to think of teenage boys as being able to take bad news and roll with it. GOOSH gets deep into the head of our protagonist and shows how stress and conflict can eat away at kids, particularly those who keep their emotions to himself.
As the pressure builds, we see Isaac’s emotions come out as anger, a more socially acceptable emotion for teenage boys than any kind of vulnerability. However, it comes back to bite him.
The strongest voice in the bunch is that of Mr. Brooks. The wise old man is far from perfect. His complicated history is touched upon but left for the reader to fill in the blanks. He’s unpredictable but makes fair points and knows his stuff both on the court and off.
There are a few moments when the perspective shifts from Isaac’s to Brooks’ estranged son, Xavier’s, point of view. It too is a fascinating look at how one person’s hero can be another person’s enemy, yet both are accurate points of view. I would have liked to have seen that relationship play out a little more directly, but its resolution is still satisfying and adds another layer to the story whose main theme is complicated family relationships.
I also like the realistic perspective of the school’s reaction to Isaac’s acting out and of the school politics that play into educational decisions, particularly discipline. McLane likes to let his adults be flawed human and not the all-knowing, calm, and collected adults that tend to populate middle grade books. It adds a realistic touch to the story which is still primarily kid-driven.
My recommendation
I recommend GOOSH to middle school teens and older who can identify with the hardships of adolescence, being part of a team, and dealing with illness, substance abuse, and other difficult family issues that are typically kept hidden from all but close confidants. Or, if they can’t identify with any of those things, it’s a good read for those who love a good teen drama with depth, heart, and hopeful, though not squeaky clean, endings.
My rating
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An interview with Seth McLane
How did the idea for this story come about? Once you sat down to write, did you outline the plot or just write as you went?
When I sat down to start writing GOOSH, I had just spent a year querying my third manuscript and dealing with rejection after rejection. This was nothing new to me. For my first and second manuscripts, I eventually acquired agents but was unable to sell either story to a publisher, so those contracts ended.
I took what I learned from those experiences and decided to lean into my strengths. I developed a plot around what I felt I was best at: writing basketball, the wise elderly character, and evolving friendships.
For my previous three manuscripts, I wrote in chronological order. After writing the opening scene of GOOSH, I struggled to get into a flow, but there were several later plot points that I saw clearly in my mind. I decided to skip around and write the scenes I could, hoping they inspired ideas for how to connect them all.
This approach was a slow build and felt chaotic at times, but it allowed me the time to think deeply about the story and characters. In the end, I’m grateful I took this route.
Is Isaac based off of anyone in particular?
Isaac is a combination of many people. Mainly, he represents many students I’ve had—in particular, boys—who walk around school with something pent up inside, clawing to get out. Maybe they’re worried what others will think if this gets out, or they feel it’s no one else’s business, or perhaps they’re unsure how to communicate their feelings.
Whatever the case, they won’t be able to keep this secret for long. Often it comes out in the form of back talk, a shoving match in the hallway, a decline in grades, or some other form of self-destruction. I’ve always felt empathy for these kids, even though they may come across as “bad.” I thought this would be a great perspective for readers to see.
Isaac is also inspired by my son, Chase. His basketball skills are based off my son’s style of play and experiences trying to improve as a young hooper. The relationship between Isaac and his little sister, Sammie, is based off how Chase interacted with his sister, Natalie, when they were younger.
Isaac’s frequent visits to Shelley Park to escape the “Mom has cancer” fog overtaking his home is based on my childhood. I spent hours playing basketball at a nearby park, trying to escape my parents’ fighting, my older brother’s torment, the bullies at school, and any of the millions of stressors emotional kids of that age face.
Do you have a favorite character? A favorite chapter or moment?
My favorite character in GOOSH is Mr. Bradley Brooks—the elderly man who befriends Isaac at Shelly Park. He was a superstar college basketball player who went on to be an NBA bust, unable to keep himself out of trouble before leaving the game and disappearing from the public eye for decades.
He is based on my father, Bradley McLane, who passed away halfway through drafting GOOSH. The word “goosh” (rhymes with “push”) was the word he used to describe a made basket that swishes the net.
My relationship with my father has been complicated my whole life. Like Mr. Brooks, my father was a superstar basketball player who threw away a great opportunity—a full Division 1 scholarship. Furthermore, he was largely absent from my life growing up and disappeared to Florida for most of the last twenty-plus years of his life.
Although he is highly flawed, the character Bradley Brooks could not end his life the way my father did. He had to rediscover his love of hoops and the family he left behind decades earlier.
My favorite moments in the story are the flashback scenes where we see Bradley Brooks’ past life through the eyes of his son, Xavier, who despite having an NBA dad, is tormented by his absence and unreliability. These scenes make me emotional when I read them, especially toward the end when the flashback scenes merge with the present-day. No spoilers here, though. Your readers will have to grab a copy of GOOSH to know exactly how this happens!
As a teacher, what advice do you have for dealing with middle school students, particularly those going through hard times like Isaac?
Teaching is tough at all levels, but my very biased opinion is that it takes a special person to teach middle schoolers—which I absolutely love to do! To be successful you need patience, empathy, a sense of humor, and consistency.
A quote that inspires me as a teacher and that I’ve had on the wall in my classroom for twenty-plus years is,
“Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
I hope my students notice the poster and think about their words and actions, but truthfully, the quote is there to serve as a reminder to me. Every student is deserving of love and respect, so when they test my patience or my authority, this quote reminds me to empathize and not take their actions or words personally.
Isaac’s behavior is a change from his previous years of school. Typically, this is an obvious red flag but given he’s a seventh grader in a new building, it goes unnoticed.
I try and build relationships with my students—creating an environment where jokes and laughter are the norm, learning about their lives outside of school, and encouraging them to journal their thoughts. All of this is paramount to any English content I am expected to teach. If that relationship is trusting and secure, they are less likely to misbehave for me and more likely to open up when going through tough times.
If you could have one professional basketball player, living or dead, read your book, who would it be?
Simple. “Pistol” Pete Maravich. As a kid the movie Pistol Pete: Birth of a Legend inspired me to work hard toward my basketball goals, to try and master his insane ball-handling abilities, and to spin a basketball on my finger. Pete Maravich is men’s college basketball’s all-time leading scorer, averaging an astounding 44.2 points per game—before the 3-point line! Recently, former Iowa star Caitlin Clark eclipsed his career total.
After his basketball career ended, Pete struggled to “find himself” before tragically passing away at just forty years old while playing basketball at a church. An autopsy revealed he had a missing left coronary artery, an astounding discovery considering his high-level of success on the court.
If “Pistol” Pete read GOOSH, I think he could connect with Isaac’s work-ethic on the court and with Bradley Brooks’ love-hate relationship with the game of basketball—especially because he met the inspiration behind Bradley Brooks, my dad. When my father was in high school, he attended an elite basketball camp in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, a camp also attended by a young Pete Maravich.
According to my dad, he hung out with Pete, not just on the basketball court but also in the dorm room at night playing cards. In fact, maybe they’re doing that together right now.
On Goodreads, you detail the rollercoaster that is the publishing world. What advice do you have for writers who plan to self-publish a book?
I’m grateful that I struggled—for over ten years—trying to get traditionally published. As I already mentioned, I wrote four manuscripts, each story getting stronger and stronger.
Although I received tons and tons of rejection, I also learned a tremendous amount from my two agents and from many of the literary agents who requested and read my manuscripts. Their feedback helped me tighten up my plot, create deeper characters, and learn the market. If I would have self-published my first manuscript, I would have put a subpar novel on the market and would have missed out on the education I received.
For those committed to self-publishing, I recommend aiming for a professional look. Pay for a cover design and pay for the design of the interior pages, which I did for a reasonable price on Fiverr.com.
If my books are shelved next to traditionally published books, I want them to look right at home—not like I made them with a box of crayons and Microsoft Word! I did not pay for editing services, because as an English teacher I feel confident in my editing abilities and in those of my beta readers. However, if you have concerns, pay for the professional editing.
What do you want readers to take away from your story?
First and foremost, I want my readers to feel something when they read GOOSH. Maybe they can connect to a relationship between characters, to a family member’s battle with cancer, to their own struggles trying to reach a goal, or…whatever! If some aspect of the story resonates, hopefully they’ll close the book, flip over to the front cover, and smile, feeling some satisfaction for having read it.
I would love for readers to see how redemption is possible—even if decades pass. Making mistakes and having regrets are a part of life. Everyone will either make their own or be hurt by the mistakes of others, but that doesn’t mean the relationship can’t be reconciled.
I would love for kids to see how important communication is. Bottling up feelings feels easier, but in the long run, it’s self-destructive. Isaac’s problem becomes more and more complicated, because he refuses to seek help from the people in his life he trusts or from the services provided at school.
If your novel became a TV show or a movie, what elements would you most like to have creative control over?
All things basketball! Although GOOSH isn’t just a basketball book, the basketball play would have to be authentic. Every show or movie I’ve watched that has unrealistic, unathletic basketball action, is instant cringe. Also, the actors playing Isaac and Mr. Brooks (Dr. J? Barkley? LeBron?) would have to have a smooth looking follow through.
What are some future book projects on your bucket list?
The story I’m planning now involves Halloween and some famous haunted areas in South Central Pennsylvania. Since I was born on Halloween, I feel qualified to write a story with some paranormal elements. I’m attempting a unique point of view, which is a challenge that I’m excited for.
Recently, a fifth-grade teacher read GOOSH to her students and they all sent me emails. Many pined for a sequel. I feel I owe it to them—their messages were so stinkin’ sweet!—to at least put some thought into it.
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