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    Swing
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    Swing
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    Swing
    Audiobook4 hours

    Swing

    Written by Mary Rand Hess

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

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    About this audiobook

    Things usually do not go as planned for seventeen-year-old Noah. He and his best friend Walt (aka Swing) have been cut from the high school baseball team for the third year in a row, and it looks like Noah’s love interest since fifth grade, Sam, will never take it past the “best friend” zone. Noah would love to retire his bat and accept the status quo, but Walt has got big plans for them both, which include making the best baseball comeback ever, getting the girl, and finally finding cool.

    To go from lovelorn to ladies’ men, Walt introduces Noah to a relationship guru—his Dairy Queen-employed cousin, Floyd—and the always informative Woohoo Woman Podcast. Noah is reluctant, but decides fate may be intervening when he discovers more than just his mom’s birthday gift at the Thrift Shop. Inside the vintage Keepall is a gold mine of love letters from the 1950s. Walt is sure these letters and the podcasts are just what Noah needs to communicate his true feelings to Sam.

    To Noah, the letters are more: an initiation to the curious rhythms of love and jazz, as well as a way for him and Walt to embrace their own kind of cool. While Walt is hitting balls out of the park and catching the eye of the baseball coach, Noah composes anonymous love letters to Sam in an attempt to write his way into her heart. But as things are looking up, way up, for Noah and Walt, the letters set off a chain of events that change everything Noah knows to be true about love, friendship, sacrifice, and fate.

    In Swing, bestselling authors Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess (Solo) present a free-verse poetic story that will speak to anyone who’s struggled to find their voice, and take a swing at life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlink Audio
    Release dateOct 2, 2018
    ISBN9780310761921
    Author

    Mary Rand Hess

    Mary Rand Hess is a poet, mixed-media artist, screenwriter, and New York Times bestselling author of Solo and Animal Ark: Celebrating Our Wild World in Poetry and Pictures, both coauthored with Kwame Alexander.      

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    Reviews for Swing

    4/5

    75 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I love Kwame Alexander, but I'm not sure hearing him read this book was the best choice. I will give this book another chance if I stumble upon it in print.
    • 5/5
      Great story and great plot twist at the end.
      Defidently would recommend.
    • 4/5
      audiobook (audiobook sync summer 2019 free download)
      diverse teen fiction audiobook written in verse (music--classic jazz, art, history, race, love, and heartbreak for modern teens in a nice neighborhood in NYC, ptsd brother back from fighting in Afghanistan, blacklivesmatter)
      two boys living through the ups and downs of their lives--sometimes things go well, sometimes there's heartbreak, lots of feelings and misunderstandings that teens can relate to, and then there's BAM. surprisingly powerful, not surprisingly from award-winning author/poet Kwame Alexander.
    • 4/5
      This is the second book by this author, Kwame Alexander. It is written in verse. This author writes about the difficulty of being a boy, really liking a girl and not knowing how to tell that girl. This book alos addresses other issues of friendships, race, social justice but mostly it is a coming of age story about a boy who loves his best friend - girl. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first book, Solo.
    • 4/5
      I read this one instead of audiobooking it. I loved being able to see Noah's art on the page. Black out poetry is awesome, but I missed hearing Kwame's voice read me the poems. I think this one would be good to read along with the audio.
    • 5/5
      It was great, although the ending wasn't the happiest it was still an amazing book/audiobook. I highly recommend it, it was phenomenal.
    • 3/5
      The ending of this book makes me think it deserves a higher rating but overall, the book didn't really appeal to me. Granted, I am not the target audience for this YA novel (which seemed to be teenaged black males) so that isn't too surprising. The romance angle to the story was OK but I didn't much care for the style of the writing.Swing - the book's title - has multiple meanings: the swing of a baseball bat, the jazz music style of the 1940s and the nickname of Walt Disney Jones, the main character Noah's best friend. To emphasize the jazz angle, the audiobook has snippets of swing music at various intervals in the book; I found this a bit distracting but it did fit the story well.
    • 4/5
      As with all Kwame Alexander books, Swing employs a beautiful rhythm as the story unfolds. Kwame Alexander reads the audio, and he does an amazing job.Noah and Walt, best friends, determine that this year looms as one of their best. They are going to get girls, play baseball, and have a great year. Noah loves Sam, the third in their group, but Sam dates the school jock. This situation plagues him. The amusing part of his life is his grandmother. When his parents leave for a month to go overseas, Noah's grandmother is supposed to move in. She's too busy with her life. Their phone calls are amusing. End result: Noah navigates this month alone with only Walt, the eternal optimist, who wants to throw a party in the house to get Noah socializing. Walt really only has one worry; he worries about his brother who serves in the military. Walt's positivity overwhelms Noah who tends more to the realistic. Walt practices daily to get on the varsity baseball team. His inability to accept his lack of skill pushes him to actually get better. Noah realizes he, himself, will never be a baseball star. They truly balance each other although Walt NEVER shuts up--Noah listens, usually.Walt finds love with the girl who sales Noah a purse. She and Walt are perfect--quoting lyrics and obscure statistics, they are equally full of life. Noah's calmness finds him looking for a more quiet way to express himself. Inside the purse purchased for his mom's birthday, Noah finds a series of love poems. These inspire him to draw and write to Sam, wooing her with art. In the midst of all of this living, someone is mysteriously putting up American flags around town.I enjoyed this novel, but the ending was abrupt and not entirely in keeping with the novel. Maybe it does--life often turns on a dime with no hints, so why not let art imitate life? This novel reflects reality in that the guy doesn't always get the girl and life can be unfair. Overall, it's well done. I didn't like the sudden shift with the end and abrupt ending. I felt like the story was cut short.
    • 4/5
      Swing by Kwame Alexander is a YA novel about 3 high schoolers told in free verse. It is a sweet story of friendship and high school romances. The ending is somewhat shocking but there was some foreshadowing that they were going to see some ugly sides of growing up in the US.