Playing Without the Ball

The title of this Rich Wallace book 'hints' at the adventurous, developmental tasks that a 17-year old boy who is abandoned by his parents encounters. It's not like Jay's parents died; they divorced and moved away leaving Jay on his own. Coping with loneliness, Jay gets a job and deals with dysfunctional characters - yet readers get the feeling his confidence in himself grows as he takes the responsibility of developing views of his life. I feel Jay's story holds up as a good example for a sports novel suggested in the recorded lecture. (portrays developmental tasks and is reassuring).
A 17-year old boy abandoned by his parents in a small Pennsylvania town develops HOPE for the future through a female friend and a church-sponsored show more basketball team.
Jane Van Wiemokly (VOYA, October 2000 (Vol. 23, No. 4))
Basketball means everything to seventeen-year-old Jay--before school, on weeknights, on weekends, at the Y, and eventually, in a church-sponsored league after he fails to make the varsity team. Although his father divorced his mother and moved to California to escape small town Sturbridge, Pennsylvania, the setting for two other Wallace sports books, Wrestling Sturbridge (Knopf, 1996/VOYA June 1997) and Shots on Goal (Knopf, 1997), and his alcoholic mother lives in New Jersey, Jay remains in Sturbridge to complete his senior year of high school. Living alone over a bar and working as its short-order cook, he copes with his loneliness, his varsity disappointment, and his lack of parental supervision. His friend Spit, a singer who performs regularly in the bar, has her own problems with drugs and overdosing, loose sexual values, and sabotaging Jay's attempts to date another girl by having sex with him herself. Most of the characters seem dysfunctional. Fellow team player Alan runs the local Methodist youth group, but he thinks nothing of smoking and passing around joints with his friends right after a youth minister recruits him to speak about the infiltration of drug use in the community. Alcohol and drug use are prevalent throughout the book, except by Jay, who knows that indulging would be bad for him. As the church-sponsored basketball tournament advances, readers will sense Jay gaining confidence in himself and in his ability to survive. The well-written basketball scenes are exciting and fast paced and will appeal to older, more mature readers who like sports fiction. Other nonsports readers will appreciate the growth in Jay's relationships and his responsibility in developing views of his life. PLB VOYA CODES: 3Q 4P S (Readable without serious defects; Broad general YA appeal; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2000, Knopf, 224p, $15.95. PLB, $17.99. Ages 15 to 18.

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