From the #1 bestselling author of  Heat ,  Travel Team  and  Million-Dollar Throw  comes a feel-good basketball tale reminiscent of The Blind Side . Forced to live on his own after his mom dies and her boyfriend abandons him, 12-year-old Jayson does whatever it takes to get by. He will do anything to avoid the foster care system. Besides, his real home has always been the beat-up basketball court behind the projects in the North Carolina hills, and his family has always been his friends and teammates. He manages to get away with his deception until the day he gets caught stealing a new pair of basketball sneakers. Game over. Within a day a social worker places him with a family from the other side of town, the Lawtons. New home, new school, new teammates. Jayson, at first, is combatative, testing the Lawtons' patience at every turn. He wants out, yet the Lawtons refuse to take the bait. But not everyone in Jayson's new life is so ready to trust him--and even Jayson's old friends give him a hard time now that he's attending a school full of rich kids. It's on Jayson to believe that he deserves a better life than the one he once had. The ultimate prize if he can? A trip to play in the state finals at Cameron Indoor Stadium–home to the Duke Blue Devils and launching pad to his dream of playing bigtime college ball. Getting there will be a journey that reaches far beyond the basketball court. In the tradition of uplifting stories like  The Blind Side, Fast Break  has all the family-friendly sports action Mike Lupica has become known and loved for. Praise for Fast Break "Eager fans will find this a slam-dunk. A must-purchase."– Booklist "Lupica's announcer-like delivery will have you breathless, on the edge of your seat, cheering."– Florida Times-Union " Fast Break  is the perfect middle-grade read for fans of basketball. With so much attention to detail in each game, readers are practically with the characters on the court. Lupica has done it again."– VOYA    Gr 5 Up-Basketball whiz Jayson, who is white, poverty-stricken, and angry, is placed with a loving, patient, affluent African American couple after his mother dies. Jayson learns to accept his new life as his team approaches the North Carolina middle school championship, an experience that instills valuable lessons about camaraderie, cooperation, and self-confidence. Audio version available from Recorded Books.α(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. Praise for  Fast Break "Eager fans will find this a slam-dunk. A must-purchase."– Booklist " Lupica's announcer-like delivery will have you breathless, on the edge of your seat, cheering."– Florida Times-Union " Fast Break  is the perfect middle-grade read for fans of basketball. With so much attention to detail in each game, readers are practically with the characters on the court. Lupica has done it again."– VOYA    Mike Lupica  (mikelupicabooks.com) is the #1 bestselling author of many popular books for young readers, including  Fantasy League ,  QB 1 ,  Heat ,  Travel Team ,  Million-Dollar Throw , and  The Underdogs . He has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. When not writing novels, Mike Lupica writes for New York's  Daily News  and appears weekly on ESPN's  The Sports Reporters . One His name was Jayson Barnes. But to his friends at school and on the court, he was known as Snap. His friend Tyrese Rice had given him the nickname one time, and it stuck.   “You’re like the basketball version of that Snapchat,” Ty had said. “One of those pictures you take with your phone and then it’s there, but only for a few seconds. Then it’s gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone.”   Jayson was all right with that. Sometimes he wanted to make himself disappear for real, from this part of Moreland, North Carolina, growing up this poor. Growing up mad. The guys he balled with at the Jefferson Houses, or the Jeff, as they called it, were always telling him how mad he played, the edge he had to him, the way he’d get into it with somebody on the other team the first time they gave him a shove or tried to get away with something.   It wasn’t like he didn’t have his reasons.   The Jefferson Houses were part of public housing on the east side of Moreland. There had been just one building at first, between the train tracks and the river, but now there were four: Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Lincoln—yet they were still known as the Jeff. And everybody on both sides of Moreland knew that the court there was where some of the best ball in town was played. Jayson and his mom had lived at the Jeff until the landlord kicked them out for not paying the rent. They’d had no choice but to move to the Pines, a building even more run-down than the Jeff, practically right on top of the railroad tracks. When the trains would come barrelin