Realistic
Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher is about the Cutter High School Mermen, an unlikely swim team of misfits trying to earn their letters. The team is put together by The Tao Jones, better known as TJ, one of the three mixed-race people in his town, and coached by a teacher who started the team to avoid having to be the assistant wrestling coach. Along with being an unlikely group of athletes, the swimmers don’t even have a pool of their own. They swim in a too-small pool at a local rec center. They also face the harassment of a town...
Robert Cormier’s The Rag and Bone Shop tackles some huge issues in its few pages, including showing how far some people are willing to go for personal gain… to the extent of destroying someone else’s soul. It’s a heart-breaking story of an evil crime made worse by greed. Like every Cormier book I’ve read, I recommend this one highly....