First published 2001
Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski faces a crucial decision. She must choose four sixth graders to compete for Epiphany Middle School in the Academic Bowl. The students she selects call themselves The Souls. Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian seem to share little beyond their classroom. Yet as they advance through rounds of competition, something deeper emerges. Their individual stories begin to weave together in unexpected ways. Mrs. Olinski watches her team march toward the state championship and discovers that these four lives have intersected long before she brought them together. Each student carries a piece of a larger puzzle. Their separate journeys have been converging all along. What looks like chance reveals itself as something more deliberate. The Academic Bowl becomes a stage where hidden connections surface and four young people find their place in a story bigger than any of them imagined.
Genres: family-life, coming-of-age, contemporary, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, hidden-connections
Setting: Epiphany Middle School
Period: 20th-century
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