He wants to be the real deal...now.Jomo Rodgers finished his first year on varsity hearing "if onlys," as in, if only he were bigger.His talent on the field is easy to spot, and local papers and college recruiters are taking notice. But with his best friend on speed dial for recruiters at big-time college programs, and treated like a king at football-crazy Cranmer Academy, Jomo decides he wants to be more than merely good, he wants to be the real deal...now.Taking his coach's lecture about commitment to heart, Jomo plunges into a new workout regimen that will make him stronger and faster. But is that enough? A little juice -- as in steroids -- might be the difference between being good and being great. It's an easy choice...that is about to make his life a whole lot harder. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr 8 Up-African-American Jomo Rodgers is a talented if somewhat undersized defensive back on his high school's football team. Overshadowed by Jayson Caldwell, his best friend and the team's star running back, Jomo, after much hesitation, decides to take the steroid route to fame, with tragic results for himself, his team, and those he loves. This is no simplistic "problem" novel-Jomo is a complex character whose ambitions are at war with his personal sense of morality. While the adults in his life are intelligent and caring, they seem too absorbed in their own issues to give him the guidance he needs. His father, a former college athlete and student activist who teaches African-American studies, is embittered by what he experienced and observed of the treatment of athletes (especially black athletes) at the college level. His anger and resentment have driven his wife away and led to excessive drinking and problems in his relationship with Jomo. Coaches seem oblivious to the signs of Jomo's steroid use until it is too late. High school football players in particular will recognize how mixed messages about pushing one's body to the limit can often lead young athletes to make bad choices. Jomo's self-serving rationalizations will resonate with anyone who has faced a difficult moral decision. Profane and scatological language abounds, but it is not outside the realm of what one could hear any day in a school locker room. Top-notch sports fiction.-Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

McKissack joins the team of novelists offering cautionary tales about the use of illegal steroids by high-school athletes. Increasingly chafed by hearing that he is a promising but undersized football player, Jomo starts a tough weight-training regimen between his freshman and sophomore years. Impatience for quick results leads to a connection with a rogue pharmacist, and although his new physical performance is impressive, the new muscle mass comes with increasingly wild mood swings that leave him alternating between severe attacks of guilt and uncontrolled fits of aggression on the field and against his girlfriend. Worse, when he tries to quit the juicing, he discovers that he is addicted. The author gives his middle-class protagonist a good heart and brain, surrounds him with unusually well-drawn peers and adults, and leaves him at the end courageously stepping up to take his licks rather than make excuses for what he has done. A well-knit and not entirely one-note story, this stands up with the likes of Robert Lipsyte's Raiders Night (2006) and Carl Deuker's Gym Candy (2007).--Peters, John Copyright 2009 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.