Synopsis When overweight thirteen-year-old Elvin Bishop is sent to camp at St. Paul's Seminary Retreat Center, he and his two best friends are forced to try out various sports in order to find out where they belong.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-09-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 241 pages | | Height: | 7.3 in | | Width: | 4.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 4.0 oz |
Publisher's Note The summer program Elvin Bishop is attending at Flagship Academy turns out to be a glorified sports camp, where each incoming freshman must find his athletic "slot". That's a problem when you're a wisecracking, overweight sports incompetent. But as Elvin bounces from sport to sport, he learns a surprising lesson--sometimes real strength comes from knowing when not to play the game. A 1996 ALA Best Book for Young Adults. A 1996 ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Readers. A 1995 Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book.
Industry Reviews In its voice, setting, characters and action, this wry account of a Catholic boys' high school orientation camp is so different from Gypsy Davey, Lynch's grim chronicle of urban lowlife, that at first glance it hardly seems to be by the same author. But for all the gallows humor and guys-at-camp mayhem, there is a similar, uplifting theme about maintaining one's selfhood and convictions despite a dehumanizing environment. From the moment he's herded aboard the bus taking him and best friends Mike and Frank off for ``Twenty-One Nights with the Knights,'' the resilient narrator, Elvin Bishop (no reference to the musician of the same name), knows he's the ``fat guy'' whom everyone is going to pick on. Being disinterested in sports as well as physically inept, he fails conspicuously at various sports before he finds his ``slot'' something that everyone must have, according to the militaristic head priest. Although he would like to fit in somewhere, Elvin refuses to compromise himself just to be accepted by others. Ironically, he as well as athletic Mike find some happiness with the misfits in the scorned Arts Sectors, while handsome, popular Frank endures a humiliating, brutal hazing to become one of the campus elite. Wise, thought-provoking and strong-hearted. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Bernstein
Gr 7-10 Elvin is off, with his two best friends, to a three-week summer camp/orientation for incoming freshmen at an all-male Catholic high school. Unlike Mikie, who is good at whatever he tries, and Frankie, who is Mr. Cool, Elvin is fat, lazy, and self-conscious. Camp proves as dreadful as he has envisioned, as the macho Brothers who serve as coaches and counselors try to make an athlete out of him. Dictating that every young man must find his ``slot,'' i.e., his sport, Elvin fails miserably at football, baseball, and finally wrestling. He finds some kindred spirits in the lowly Arts Sector, a group that is treated harshly by everyone else. Frankie hooks up with the party crowd, even though he is subjected to hazing rituals that include excessive drinking. Described through Elvin's eyes and his sarcastic (and outrageously funny) letters to his mother, the camp is reminiscent of the military high school in Adam Rapp's Missing the Piano (Viking, 1994). Lynch has a knack for writing in a style (and in the raunchy vernacular) that rings true with YAs. While not as gripping as Shadow Boxer (HarperCollins, 1993), this book is filled with drama, humor, and pathos. Elvin grows as he sorts out what's important in life, and the issues he faces, such as peer pressure and conformity, will not be foreign to teen readers. Tom S. Hurlburt, La Crosse Public Library, WI Lopate
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