Today’s post is inspired by the Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and The Bookish. The topic for this week is Books Dealing with Tough Subjects. I’m sure I could come up with ten books no problem (there are so many amazing authors out there) but when I saw that topic one name came to mind. Chris Crutcher. If you don’t know who that is, do yourself a favor and head over to his website. The man is basically amazing. A few quick facts (from the biography section of his website):
* He’s been publishing “young adult” since 1983. As of this year he has 14 books published.
* He is a former teacher and director of an alternative school.
* He worked for 25 years as a child and family therapist specializing in abuse and neglect.
* He spent 30 years as a Spokane Child Protection Team Leader.
* He is one of the most frequently banned authors in North America.
What does this have to do with anything? The man knows what he is talking about! Aside from being an amazing author he has the background knowledge and years of real life experience to write about abuse, neglect, and other tough subjects. And he’s honest. He doesn’t shy away from saying things or writing about things that get his books challenged. Plus, plus, plus… he is funny. He understands how to use humor when writing about tough situations without making light of the issue. His books are accessible to teen readers today (even though some were written nearly 30 years ago!) and I just cannot fangirl enough. Also, as you read about each of the books listed below you will notice that sports factor heavily in the story. If you know me you know that I’m not a “sporty” girl by any means. This made me put off reading his books for the longest time. What a shame! Once I finally picked one up (Deadline) I flew through everything I could get my hands on. Seriously. Chris freaking Crutcher y’all. Read. His. Books.
Note: I’m focusing on his full length novels for teens that I have read. He also has an autobiography and two short story collections. The book descriptions come from Crutcher’s website. Titles are linked there as well.
Running Loose (1983)
Louie Banks has the world by the tail. It’s his last year in high school; he has wheels, a starting spot on the football team, good friends, and the girl of everyone’s dreams. If he can stay away from Boomer Cowans long enough to graduate, he’s got it made. But the world suddenly turns and snatches Louie by the tail, and it just won’t let go. His visions of sportsmanship and fair play go up in smoke by the second game of the season; his expectations of life are shattered by spring.
Many of Louie’s wounds are self-inflicted; others, the result of a cold random throw of the cosmic dice. Either way, his road to manhood has become cluttered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Running Loose is a story about that time in a boy’s life when he is suddenly expected to act like a man-to be accountable for the things he does and to react reasonably to the craziness around him. Sometimes Louie does; sometimes he doesn’t.
In the final swimming season at Frost High School Coach Max II Song offers his small but talented team the gift of self-discipline in the form of Stotan Week–a grueling four-hour-a-day, nonstop test of physical and emotional stamina designed to bring them to the outer edge of their capabilities. The four young men accept the challenge-and something none of them could have predicted is set in motion.
Stotan! is a humorous, sometimes heartbreaking story about making sense of chaos, about falling in love when it’s not in the cards, about friendship and commitment, about life and death.
Willie is a top athlete, the star of the legendary game against Crazy Horse Electric. Then a freak accident robs him of his once-amazing physical talents.
Betrayed by his family, his girlfriend, and his own body, Willie’s on the run, penniless and terrified on the streets, where he must fight to rebuild both his body and his life.
When Dillon Hemingway is forced to witness his brother Preston’s suicide, his life understandably seems to fall apart. His quest to make it whole again involves Stacy Ryder, Preston’s girlfriend, who is left with more than a memeory of Dillon’s dead brother, and Jennifer Lawless, a star high school basketball player with a secret too monstrous to tell and too enormous to keep.
His antagonist are a vicious cycling gang, a single-minded school principal, and Jennifer’s father, a brilliant lawyer with a chilling disregard for human sensitivity.
Chris Crutcher’s Chinese Handcuffs is a story about a time when life seems too overwhelming to confront. It is also a story of courage and acceptance, told with power and sensibility.
When Sarah Byrnes was three years old, her condition became synonymous with her surname. Her face and hands were badly burned in a mysterious accident, and her father refused to allow reconstructive surgery. She developed a suit of cold, stainless steel armor to defend herself against the taunts of a world insensitive to her pain. You enter into Sarah Byrnes’s world on her terms, or you don’t enter.
Enter Eric Calhoune–Moby to his friends. Eric passed through his early years on a steady diet of Oreos and Twinkies and root beer floats, and he sports the girth to prove it. Because of their “terminal uglies,” he and Sarah Byrnes have become true masters in the art of underhanded revenge directed at anyone who dares to offend their sensibilities.
When Eric turns out for the high school swimming team, he begins to shed layers of extra poundage. Fearing the loss of the one friendship he treasures, he gorges to “stay fat for Sarah Byrnes,” who discovers his motive and threatens to beat him more senseless than she thinks he already is. Then the truth of Sarah Byrnes’s horrific past finally catches up with her.
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is a darkly funny, suspenseful novel about friendship, fear, and making the best of a bad situation. Once again Chris Crutcher slaps us in the face with compelling questions that demand dignified answers.
Bo Brewster has been at war with his father for as long as he can remember. Following angry outbursts at his football coach and English teacher that have cost him his spot on the football team and moved him dangerously close to expulsion from school, he turns to the only adult he believes will listen: Larry King.
In his letters to Larry, Bo describes his quest for excellence on his own terms. No more coaches for me, he tells the talk show icon, no more dads. I’m going to be a triathlete, an Ironman.
Relegated to Mr. Nak’s before-school Anger Management group (which he initially believes to be populated with future serial killers and freeway snipers), Bo meets a hard-edged, down-on-their-luck pack of survivors with stainless steel shields against the world that Bo comes to see are not so different from his own. It is here he meets and falls in love with Shelly, a future American Gladiator, whose passion for physical challenge more than matches his.
Ironman is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking story about growing up in the heart of struggle. It is about standing up, getting knocked down, and standing up again. It is about being heard–and learning to listen.
There’s bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don’t have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway.
A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant) to find their places in a school that has no place for them, the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to carve out their own turf. T. J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket–unattainable for most, exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T. J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High–will be an effective carving tool. He’s right. He’s also wrong.
Still, it’s always the quest that counts. And the bus on which the Mermen travel to swim meets–piloted by Icko, the permanent resident of All, Night Fitness–soon becomes the cocoon inside which they gradually allow themselves to talk, to fit, to bloom.
Chris Crutcher is in top form with a cast of characters–adults, children, and teenagers–fighting for dignity in a world where tragedy and comedy dance side by side, where a moment’s inattention can bring lifelong heartache, and where true acceptance is the only prescription for what ails us.
Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world.
How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho?
First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act.
And then there’s Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she’s first on the list.
Living with a secret isn’t easy, though, and Ben’s resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn’t the only person in Trout with secrets. Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world.
In this full-length novel from Chris Crutcher, his first since the best-selling Deadline, the ultimate bully and the ultimate good guy tangle during Period 8.
Paul “the Bomb” Baum tells the truth. No matter what. It was something he learned at Sunday School. But telling the truth can cause problems, and not minor ones. And as Paulie discovers, finding the truth can be even more problematic. Period 8 is supposed to be that one period in high school where the truth can shine, a safe haven. Only what Paulie and Hannah (his ex-girlfriend, unfortunately) and his other classmates don’t know is that the ultimate bully, the ultimate liar, is in their midst.
Terrifying, thought-provoking, and original, this novel combines all the qualities of a great thriller with the controversy, ethics, and raw emotion of a classic Crutcher story.
So there you have it. Chris Crutcher, ladies and gentleman. I think you can tell how very much I love his books. If you’re not sure where to start I recommend Deadline and Whale Talk. Those are the two I started with. But really, you can’t go wrong!
Today’s post is inspired by the Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and The Bookish. The topic for this week is Books Dealing with Tough Subjects. I’m sure I could come up with ten books no problem (there are so many amazing authors out there) but when I saw that topic one name came to mind. Chris Crutcher. If you don’t know who that is, do yourself a favor and head over to his website. The man is basically amazing. A few quick facts (from the biography section of his website):
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