Title: Shoestring Dreams
Author: Andre Wade
Date: 2021
Publisher: Tellwell
ISBN: 978-0-2288-7093-7
Quote: ""Being a dreamer is about acknowledging the obstacles before you and overocming them."
Although it's a full-length novel in its own right, Amazon likes series, and this one opens a series.
Eric just wants to get through grade twelve and into college, preferably with a basketball scholarship, since his grades aren't likely to win the academic kind. Eric is a nice, clean-living teenager who copes with things, from the physical strain of growing tall fast to the emotional strain of watching his beloved grandfather develop Alzheimer's Disease, by keeping his mind on basketball.
More than anything else, this book explains to people like me who tend to feel that our society takes "sports" far too seriously how much a "silly little boys' game" can mean to, and do for, a teenager who might otherwise be "troubled." That's its social value.
What's not to love? A lot of Eric's time is spent in the gym and the locker room, and the author is far too good at bringing that mood, the noise, the smell, etc., of places some of us preferred not to be, vividly into readers' minds. If you loathed your high school gym, insight into what the gym means to Eric may not be your idea of a fun read. Well...I never liked gym, but I'm glad I stuck with the book.
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