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The Contender

10 best books like The Contender (Robert Lipsyte): Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, Father's Arcane Daughter, You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?, The Friends, Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art, El Bronx Remembered, Ironman, Children of the River, I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, Remembering the Good Times

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!
AuthorM.E. Kerr
ISBN0061139890
M. E. Kerr's first novel - hailed by the New York Times as a "timely, compelling" and "brilliantly funny" look at adolescence and friendship

It was bad enough that they had to move to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Heights, as Tucker Woolf's dad instructs him to tell everyone after he loses his job....
Father's Arcane Daughter
AuthorE.L. Konigsburg
POOR LITTLE RICH BOY Winston Carmichael has it all: a big house, servants, vacations in Palm Beach and a fancy private school. But with over protective parents and a sense of responsibility for his younger sister, Heidi, Winston sometimes feels more as if he's living in a prison than a dream.

Then,...
You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?
AuthorJean Fritz
ISBN0606168486
I checked this out from the library thinking it would be one of Jean Fritz's picture books such as Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May?--which I love! It actually ended up being a 76 page biography (with a few illustrations) but was still wonderfully lively, sensitive and humorous--not to mention...
The Friends
AuthorRosa Guy
ISBN0440226678
A powerful, award-winning novel about friendship.

Phyllisia Cathy--She is fourteen. Her problems seem overwhelming: New York, after life on her sunlit West Indies island, is cold, cruel and filthy. She is insulted daily and is beaten up by classmates. What Phyllisia needs, God not being...
Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art
AuthorJan Greenberg
ISBN0810943867
Fantastic concept. Seeing the works of art through the poets' eyes really helped me see more in them, connect with them on a deeper level. Many were new to me, though, and that was interesting, too.

I really liked what Bobbi Katz did in "Lessons from a Painting by Rothko" for one of Marc Rothko's...
El Bronx Remembered
AuthorNicholasa Mohr
ISBN0064471004
In a city called New York ...
In a neighborhood called El Bronx ...


The Fernandex children own a very special pet: A white hen named after their favorite Hollywood movie star.
A new girl comes to school - a gypsy child who can read palms and foretell the future.
A young boy must...
Ironman
AuthorChris Crutcher
ISBN0060598409
Bo has been at war with his father for as long as he can remember. The rage he feels gives him the energy as a triathlete to press his body to the limit, but it also translates into angry outbursts toward his teachers.

Now dangerously close to expulsion from school, Bo has been assigned to Anger Management...
Children of the River
AuthorLinda Crew
ISBN0440210224
Sundara fled Cambodia with her aunt's family to escape the Khmer Rouge army when she was thirteen, leaving behind her parents, her brother and sister, and the boy she had loved since she was a child.

Now, four years later, she struggles to fit in at her Oregon high school and to be "a good Cambodian...
I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This
AuthorJacqueline Woodson
ISBN0142405558
3 soft snickerdoodles.

Cover Love: No, but I saw there were several editions of this book and many other great covers.

Why I Wanted to Read This:
My library has a bunch of Jacqueline Woodson books and I keep meaning to read some of them. I saw mention of this one in an article so I went...
Remembering the Good Times
AuthorRichard Peck
ISBN0440973392
How well do we know our best friends?

They were the best of friends. Sixteen-year-old Buck Mendenhall first met Kate Lucas the summer before seventh grade. In eighth grade they made friends with the brilliant and wealthy newcomer, Trav Kirby. They didn't seem to need anyone else. Mostly they...
Rucker Park Setup
AuthorPaul Volponi
ISBN0670061301
“Wow” is all I can say after reading Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi. This
book really deserves 5 stars out of 5, no doubt about it. Being a person who
doesn’t like reading, Paul Volponi delivers big, as a writer, with his second
based basketball story after Black and White, showing...
Wrestling Sturbridge
AuthorRich Wallace
ISBN0679885552
Another interesting sports and character book; small town wrestling team out East is the obsession of the whole town (like football in Odessa/Midland). The place is the kind of town most kids can't wait to leave, and the teenage behavior is pretty accurate - lots of drinking by athletes and cheerleaders,...
7 Days at the Hot Corner
AuthorTerry Trueman
ISBN0060574941
In baseball, fielding your position at third base is tricky—that's why third is called "the hot corner." You have to be aware that anything can happen at any time.

This should be the best year of Scott's life: It's his last season of varsity ball, his team is about to go to the city championship,...
Why I Fight
AuthorJ. Adams Oaks
ISBN1416911774
Wyatt Reaves takes the seat next to you, bloodied and soaking wet, and he is a big-fisted beast. Tell him to stretch out like an X across asphalt and you've got a parking space. But Wyatt's been taking it lying down for too long, and he is NOT happy.

Since he turned twelve and a half, he's been living...
The Moves Make the Man
AuthorBruce Brooks
ISBN0064405648
Reverse spin, triple pump, reverse dribble, stutter step with twist to the left, stutter into jumper, blind pass. These are me. The moves make the man. The moves make me.

Jerome foxworthy -- the Jayfox to his friends -- likes to think he can handle anything. He handled growing up without a father....
Night Hoops
AuthorCarl Deuker
ISBN0064472752
Nick Abbott and Trent Dawson have nothing in common but basketball. It's sophomore year and Nick is trying to deal with his parents' divorce. He also really wants to be a star on the basketball team. Trent, his neighbor, is angry, and aggressive. The two form an uneasy bond as they quietly practice each...
A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich
AuthorAlice Childress
ISBN0698118545
Benjie can stop using heroin anytime he wants to. He just doesn't want to yet. Why would he want to give up something that makes him feel so good, so relaxed, so tuned-out? As Benjie sees it, there's nothing much to tune in for. School is a waste of time, and home life isn't much better. All Benjie wants is for...
Zane's Trace
AuthorAllan Wolf
ISBN0763628581
A coming-of-age road story with a supernatural twist — and a compulsively readable poetic novel about identity and belonging.

Zane Guesswind has just killed his grandfather, or so he believes. So he steals the 1969 Plymouth Barracuda his long-gone father left behind and takes off on a manic...
Hoops
AuthorWalter Dean Myers
ISBN0440938848
All eyes are on seventeen-year-old Lonnie Jackson while he practices with his team for a city-wide basketball Tournament of Champions. His coach, Cal, knows Lonnie has what it takes to be a pro-basketball player, but warns him about giving in to the pressure. Cal knows because he, too, once had the chance--but...
Beyond the Desert Gate
AuthorMary Ray
Sequel to The Ides of April. Palestine in the first century A.D. is as disturbed and divided as it is today. The Jews have revolted against Roman occupation and as they grow more restive, Rome clamps down harder. The ten Greek cities of Palestine the Decapolis want only to continue their peaceful trading...
Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity
AuthorRobert Cwiklik
ISBN0812039211
I didn't care much for this biography of Albert Einstein. Oh, it presented the facts of his life well enough. It also did a good job of explaining Einstein's theories and showing why they were so revolutionary. What turned me off was Mr. Cwiklik's style of presenting Einstein's life. He didn't engage...
After the War
AuthorCarol Matas
ISBN0689807228
"Didn't the gas ovens finish you all off?" is the response that meets Ruth Mendenberg when she returns to her village in Poland after the liberation of Buchenwald at the end of World War II. Her entire family wiped out in the Holocaust, the fifteen-year-old girl has nowhere to go. Members of the underground...
Slumming
AuthorKristen D. Randle
ISBN0060010223
Everybody has two eyes and a nose and a mouth. What makes some people beautiful and some people not?

Nikki never imagined that this offhand thought would change the course of her senior year forever. But when she poses the question to her best friends, Alicia and Sam, Alicia is suddenly inspired,...
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