Teen Fiction - Choices & Transitions, Teen Fiction - Boys & Young Men, Teen Fiction - School

Running Loose

Name: Running Loose
Author: Chris Crutcher
ISBN: 9780060094911

by Chris Crutcher

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Overview

Louie Banks has it made.

He's got a starting spot on the football team, good friends, and a smart, beautiful girlfriend who loves him as much as he loves her.

Early in the fall, he sees all his ideas of fair play go up in smoke; by spring, what he cares about most has been destroyed. How can Louie keep going when he's lost everything?

Louie, a high school senior in a small Idaho town, learns about sportsmanship, love, and death as he matures into manhood.

Synopsis

Louie Banks has it made.

He's got a starting spot on the football team, good friends, and a smart, beautiful girlfriend who loves him as much as he loves her.

Early in the fall, he sees all his ideas of fair play go up in smoke; by spring, what he cares about most has been destroyed. How can Louie keep going when he's lost everything?

Publishers Weekly

In this first novel, a boy's senior year in high school goes awry when he's kicked off the football team for taking a stand against the coach, and his girlfriend is killed in a car accident. PW found this ``a tightly plotted, compelling talecompassionate, funny and sensitive.'' (12-up)

About the Author, Chris Crutcher

Chris Crutcher has written nine critically acclaimed novels, an autobiography, and two collections of short stories. He has won three lifetime achievement awards for the body of his work: the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults, the ALAN Award for a Significant Contribution to Adolescent Literature, and the NCTE National Intellectual Freedom Award.

He has been a child and family therapist with the Spokane Community Mental Health Center and is currently chairperson of the Spokane Child Protection Team. Chris Crutcher lives in Spokane, Washington.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Children's Literature - Susie Wilde

Crutcher's sports training has aided his writing. " I always thought that a lot of my great ideas and strengths came from competing. I used to find that place where I'd get in the zone and not get tired, and I feel that when I'm really interested in a conversation or psychological concept. I see myself as a writer in very much the same way I see myself as an athlete. When I get into a good story, then the story will carry itself." Crutcher's talent is evident in Running Loose, in which Louie learns about love, death, sportsmanship, and integrity as well as football.