Chiang, Sylv, with art by Connie Choi. Tournament Trouble. Book 1 of the Cross Ups series. 2018. 188p. ISBN 978-1-77321-008-7. Available at FIC CHI on the library shelves.
Jaden loves video games, especially the Cross Ups franchise, but his Taiwanese mother finds it too violent and does not let him play in the house. His older brother Jay and him sneak games when their parents are out working, and they have to be careful not to get caught. Now in seventh grade, Jaden and his two best friends Devesh and Hugh are fans of Cross Ups, and they play as much as they can. Jaden is very good, good enough that when he defeats one of the best players in an epic game, he receives an invitation to play in the city’s Top Tiers Tournament, with a $2,000 prize for the best Cross Ups player.
Cali shares a duplex with Jaden. They have lived next door to each other since they were born, and, being of ethnic Chinese heritage, Cali gets along splendidly with Jaden’s mother. But Cali’s mother is sick, and she ends up in the hospital. She will need to stay in a wheelchair for a few months, and because their house has four steps and they can’t afford a ramp, Cali will need to go live with her father in Montréal. Jaden loves Cali like a sister, but recently his friends have started pointing out that there may be more there than he thinks. The three of them are also the target of two bullies in their math class, and the measures taken by their math teacher to solve this problem only make things worse.
As the tournament nears, Jaden has to figure out how he can attend without his parents knowing that not only does he play violent video games, but he’s really good at it too. And that $2,000 would be perfect as it would pay for a ramp for Cali’s mother, and she wouldn’t have to move so far away. With the pressure mounting, can Jaden triumph in the T3 tournament and help himself and his friends?
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