I’ve spent the last week teaching the Notice and Note strategies by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst. In teaching the “Aha Moment”, we used excerpts fro Jerry Spinelli’s Crash and I ended up doing an impromptu book talk because I remembered how much I loved this book.
My school library’s catalogue summarizes the book this way
Crash Coogan, rising football sensation, and his friend, Mike make a regular practice of tormenting the school nerd, Penn Webb, but when Mike takes a prank too far, Crash finds himself locked in a moral dilemma.
It doesn’t do the book justice. There is a lot about friendship and families. Crash’s grandfather plays an important role, as does Penn Webb’s great-grandfather. The kids in the book are realistic and the way Crash treats Webb, and how it escalates, is as well. I think it is because both boys are so ordinary. It is the sort of book that you pick up and read until it is finished because you can’t put it down.
booksandbassets 