Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories

This short story collection serves as my introduction to Chris Crutcher as an author These stories are easy to read despite dealing with social situations and moral dilemmas self esteem, reaction to death and dying, prejudice and discrimination, or family relationships I must admit that I experienced some discomfort reading the social slurs that Crutcher so breezily makes use of in The Telephone Man In the prologue to the story he says that he has fears in writing about racism but that basic les [...]

One of my favorite young adult authors, Chris Crutcher writes realistic stories about realistic people with realistic problems He always writes intelligently and with a sense of humor while simultaneously depicting his characters sympathetically This collection of short stories is great for people who enjoy realistic fiction, but don t want to read a longer book Short stories are also great for when you don t have time for a whole novel you can read a story in one sitting, and if you don t happe [...]

Susan Hart Crutcher, C 1989 Athletic Shorts New York Greenwillow Books Short stories Print Selected from catalog School Library Journal Review below Athletic Shorts is a dynamic collection of 6 sports related short stories by Chris Crutcher All with male main characters that experience a sport as an important part of their lives, these stories are complete portrayals that show growth or change Angus Bethune is chagrinned at having the name of a cow, particularly since he is the size of one Not o [...]

Chris Crutcher achieved what he wanted within this book It is composed of short stories, and some of them are continuations using the characters from other books Of course I want to read all of the other books now to totally understand these characters Another aspect of the book that I appreciated was the prelude to each story Crutcher provided why he chose to write that particular story, or who encouraged him in the writing process for that story It was interesting to be in an author s prewriti [...]

Marcia ViningCrutcher, C 1991 Athletic shorts six short stories New York GreenwillowGenre Short StoriesSelection process Morning, T Jones, T E Toth, L Fleishhacker, J 1991 Athletic shorts six short stories Book School Library Journal, 37 9 , 278 As the title implies this collection of short stories uses athletics as its unifying theme Using realistic situations Crutcher tells about common difficulties in the lives of his characters that teens will find familiar He uses humor to help make sense o [...]

This was yet another book chosen for me solely on the strength of the narration by the late, great Frank Muller I spend at least two hours every day on my bike so I ve been grinding through a lot of audio books I d never heard of this writer before but he makes me wish that I could go back and try being 15 all over again and this time do a better job of it Think of these stories as The Catcher in the Rye except the protagonist isn t some over privileged, rich wise ass and instead a hard working [...]

I really enjoyed this book I would recommend it to high school students who are interested in sports Athletic Shorts is a book of short stories that all have a theme about life built into them The book shows the troubles that some athletes face, whether it was pressure from their parents to perform or if they were dealing with loss of a close friend These short stories also cover the endings of some of Chris Crutcher s other books Overall, it was a very good book I look forward to reading books [...]

THE HIGH SCHOOL YEARSNow that I m older, I look back on school years gone by and growing up coming of age As with all adults, or most, we think If only I knew then what I know now As youngsters we worried about who liked us and who didn t like us I m not referring to the romantic like The simplest things in life made us think it will either ruin us for life or make us heroes.TIME WILL TELL OR HEALI wish I could redo a lot of things, one of them being school Mostly high school I wasn t a good stu [...]

The six short stories that Chris Crutcher includes in this book are all interwoven with sports and all have teenage male protagonists, but with very different problems and issues to work through Crutcher writes with wit as we preview peeks into the lives of these teenagers A few of the characters were interesting and would maybe worth reading one of his books that are dedicated to those specific characters Despite what the cover might have you think, the stories are not sports centric In most th [...]

I really enjoyed Chris Crutcher s short stories and was glad to know that they came from the characters and situations that he wrote in some of his previous novels When a author has the opportunity to further develop aspects from a previous novel that he didn t get to explore at the time, great things can happen The theme of overcoming adversity is really prevalent in this collection which I think will appeal to a broad teen audience These are all sports related stories, but the sportiness isn t [...]

This book was so interesting Coming from an athlete s perspective I enjoyed that this book was about the lives of athletes and their stories Although this book had six different short stories, each one was interesting and had so much to it I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys drama and is interested in sports.

Athletic Shorts is a compilation of six short stories all pertaining to the area of sports One story is about a boy, who is bigger than most kids and gets picked on, but that is not the only peculiar thing about Angus Bethune besides his name, his parents are divorced and have remarried No big deal you think, right Well, when his parents remarried, they married someone of the same sex So his mom is married to his mom and his dad is married to his dad On top of this Angus has been elected to home [...]

Really good, some deep moments, good to read with a group.

Powerful stories worth reading.

I am reviewing the book Athletic Shorts A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune , by Chris Crutcher I think Crutcher s purpose in writing this book was to have a few short stories that are like his other books He also states, that in his other books he lets the reader choose how the story ends The short stories in this book are about people and what happened to them before or after the book was written I think the Crutcher s intended audience is teenagers and the feelings of kids who don t f [...]

Copy and past your book review in this space Have you ever wanted to relate to someone or something If you are athletic, a teenager, or an athletic teenager, then the chances are you might relate to one of these awesome short stories in Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher Each of these fun exciting shorts tell a story with a different theme and moral Among these many morals young boys Angus, Johnny, Petey, Lionel, Jack, and Louie have to overcome many feats These include embarrassing families, exc [...]

I didn t read this when I was growing up, I m not even sure if I ever saw a Chris Crutcher book before I did a Banned Books display at work in college I m sure I did, but all I m conjuring up are Matt Christopher books which I avoided like the plague and hearing the occasional oral report in class from a sports book, which instantly made me turn off my attention.By the way, how do elementary school teachers do it If I had to listen to 20 summarized plots of books from R.L Stine, Judy Blume or wh [...]

Athletic Shorts Six Short Stories How much can one person struggle In the compelling novel by Chris Crutcher, Athletic Shorts tells six different stories about six different struggling teens Johnny, Angus, Lion, Petey, Telephone man , and Louie all have their own difficult life stories Although none of the boys lives intertwine, they all have one thing in common they need help As they investigate the hardships of life, the boys struggle to find out who they are and what they stand for In Athleti [...]

This collection of short stories are often found on the ALA challenged book list It has been challenged because it has a story that has an 18 year old boy befriending a man with AIDS, because it discusses homosexuality and because of its language Chris Crutcher, though, is an expert at what he does writing about reality He said, They think kids should not be exposed in print to what they are exposed in their lives But I believe what I believe, so I write my stories Crutcher even has a whole sect [...]

Imagine if you had to make a decision between two things, and both could ruin your life Athletic Shorts is an inspiring fiction book written by Chris Crutcher, and it tells the stories of six different athletes and their personal struggles Out of the six stories, the most affecting one in the collection is one called A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune This story is about a boy named Angus the narrator who is an overweight high school football player who struggles with social acceptance [...]

The book Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher is jam packed with six short stories of athletes lives filled with tragedy, comedy, and the challenges of being a teenager, each of them leaves you wanting They all take place in different places, but they all seem the same All of the stories are about teenagers going through their early struggles All of them take place in small towns where sports are everything I have chosen my favorite one to go into depth about Although it was a very hard choice, it [...]

The book Athletic Shorts Six Short Stories by Chris Crutcher is a non fictional young adult book The book consists of six short stories, each about a different person The people from the short stories were actually characters from Crutcher s previous books Crutcher decided to write these short stories after many people continued to ask him about the previous characters.The setting of this book is all over the place, as it is six different short stories with different characters In the first shor [...]

Athletic Shorts a compilation of short stories by Chris Crutcher addresses a slew of difficult topics from being an obese teen, to father and son relationships, even what to do when faced with wrestling a girl Each character is a complex realistic person with all the typical teen problems in their own ways In A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune an overweight teen struggles with unpleasant peers at the school dance partly because both his parents are in happy homosexual relationships The [...]

Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher is a collection of six different stories that tell of how a certain sport affects the characters of each of the short stories Each character s situation deals with a topic that is hard to talk about Whether it s racism, sexual orientation or another difficult topic, Chris Crutcher tackles the issue In the first chapter, Angus Bethune deals with a lot of stereotypes in his life First off, he is a little overweight and is quite often picked on for that To top it o [...]

The short story A Brief Moment in the Life of Agnus Bethune was a good example of adolescent life and how it s not smooth sailing for everyone The teenage years are hard, whether you are an overweight boy with openly gay parents or a pretty teenage girl struggling with bulimia At the same time, however, I felt like Crutcher could ve gone further with this story this is the problem with most short stories , and at the end of the story, I wanted to know I wanted to see what happened after Melissa [...]

This great collection of short stories follows up on characters that author Chris Crutcher introduced in other works, some major characters and some supporting characters I ve often wished that authors would expand on an interesting character that only played a bit part in the book What a good idea, especially if the reader of the original story is a reluctant one These stories ranged from funny to touching to disturbing, and covered a lot of issues that are relevant to teens Racism, violence, h [...]

I found A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune to be a good example of how to write a short story well Although I found the story itself to be pretty average in terms of originality, I enjoyed it in terms of the writing For teens and young adults experiencing issues with self esteem and body image, I think that this story is highly relatable I found the male s perspective to be refreshing we generally only get to read about issues with body image from the female point of view Angus, though, [...]

These six short stories brought to life what outside things can affect an athlete s performance What sounded like a book of pure sports stories ended up revealing background stories and troubles that occur outside of the field or court There were 5 characters that the reader followed Angus, Johnny, Lionel, Jack, and Louie These character struggle through family and friend issues, abuse, death, and many other reasons Towards the end of their stories, a sense of pride and growth is developed and t [...]

A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune is such a fun way to remember how emotionally charged high school can be There are real problems and some not so real problems all mashing together to createion This story, however, takes the confusion out of the story It is simply getting to follow the fat kid through some scenarios Whether you were the fat kid or the popular kid or the athletic kid or whatever kind of kid you were, I would guess that you can relate to this story and remember how it f [...]

Athletic Shorts is a collection of short stories by Chris Crutcher All but one of the stories features characters from a previous Crutcher book In A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune, Angus struggles with fitting in at school while being overweight and having two sets of gay parents He is elected Winter Ball King as a joke, he has to dance with the love of his life, Melissa LeFevre and deal with her obnoxious boyfriend In The Pin, Johnny and his disciplinarian father compete against each [...]