Sunny by Jason Reynolds

Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds, with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team—a team that could take them to the state championships. They all have a lot to lose, but they all have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Sunny is the main character in this novel, the third of four books in Jason Reynold’s electrifying middle grade series.

I love this series, and I especially love Sunny. He's an amazing runner, as we see in the first two books, but we learn that 1) he runs only to honor his deceased mother and 2) his father makes him. 

Sunny doesn't actually want to run. He hates it; it brings him no joy whatsoever. What he really wants to do is dance. But he's mired in guilt, convinced that he caused his mother's death (she died in childbirth), and unable to tell his father that he needs to stop running and start living his own life. 

Oh, Sunny's story broke my heart. He's isolated from everyone except his teacher (who was also a good friend of both parents), patients at the local hospital where his grandfather works,  and his friends on the track team. He never had a birthday party or celebration, because his father has always mourned his mother on that day. It was all so sad, but Sunny's determination to feel the music, plus Coach's quick thinking about how to keep Sunny on the team without having him run, gave this novel a dose of optimistic magic. I also loved the hesitant, truthful conversations between Sunny and his father at the end of the book. 

I would recommend this series to all kids, even ones not interested in sports, because the heart of these books are the vivid, memorable characters.