Outcasts United: The Story of a Refugee Soccer Team That Changed a Town, adapted for young people by Warren St. John.

Great story. Luma Mufleh, a Jordanian-born, U.S. educated soccer coach, takes on a group of misfit immigrant boys from half a dozen different, mostly war-torn, countries and makes them into a soccer team—actually three soccer teams the Under Thirteens, the Under Fifteens, and the Under Seventeens. Collectively, they’re known as the Fugees.

It’s a feel-good sports story. I can see it being made into a movie. But I wish I had read the adult version. This YA adaptation felt “holey”, as if there were missing motivations and explanations that would have made the story more understandable. Maybe it was just a true story about real people, and maybe some of the inconsistencies and questions that were raised in my mind were just a result of real life being inconsistent and not as conveniently close-looped as fiction. But since I knew that the author had abridged the adult book of the same title, I kept wondering what was left out.

There’s lots of play-by-play soccer commentary on the Fugees’ critical games. I skimmed over those parts to get to the final score, but soccer fans would enjoy the details.

Here’s a 2007 NY Times article by Mr. St. John that gives the basic outlines of the Fugees and their story. The book mostly focuses on the 2006-2007 soccer season for the Fugees, the tension between the town of Clarkston, Georgia and the influx of refugees, and the coach, Luma and her dedication to the refugee boys she coaches.

From the Fugees Family website:

“The team that Coach Luma established in 2004 has grown to four teams, a tutoring program, an academy, an academic camp, and more. The Fugees Family is the only organization in Georgia that provides programming specifically for refugee boys. By tapping into soccer, the most popular sport in the world, the Fugees Family undertakes its mission to level the playing field and give our kids the same chance at being successful as everyone else’s.”

I would suggest the adult version of the book for adults and young adults who really want to know all of the background on the team and the refugee “problem” in Clarkston. The YA adaptation is for soccer fans who maybe are reluctant readers or want an easier, quick-to-read version of the story.

Gettysburg: The True Account of Two Young Heroes in the Greatest Battle of the Civil War by Iain Cameron Martin.

I wanted to like this book, and it had a lot going for it: lots of good, well-placed photographs, an absorbing subject, apt quotations from numerous primary sources, a good flow to the story, for the most part, thorough attention to details without getting bogged down.

However, take this sentence . . . please:

“Ewell reconsidered his options and ordered Johnson to take Culp’s Hill with his division when they arrived but was only to advance if the hill remained unoccupied by the enemy—a discretionary order.”

Ouch. There were several awkward sentences and grammatical constructions, and I began to wonder if the book actually had an editor–or a proofreader. The publisher, Sky Pony Press, is not one I’ve ever encountered, but I looked at their website and they seem like a decent small publisher/imprint. The design and layout and most of the text are all quite above average. So it was even more jarring to read sentences like the one above or come across paragraphs with mixed verb tenses.

In addition, the book was unsuitably titled since it didn’t really focus on the “two young heroes,” Daniel Skelly and Tillie Pierce. The two eyewitnesses to the battle are quoted, and their stores are told. But the book includes so much more from so many more witnesses. The subtitle is not a good reflection of the scope of the book.

It’s sad because I became fascinated with the battle of Gettysburg in a bittersweet sort of way long ago when I read Killer Angels and then all over again when I saw the movie Gettysburg. Is there anything more tragic, and just sadder, than Pickett’s doomed charge? There can hardly be too many books about Gettysburg, but the subject shouldn’t be marred by infelicitous prose and bad syntax.