Big Game of Everything, The

Lynch, Chris

ISBN 10: 0060740353 ISBN 13: 9780060740351

Publisher: HarperColl, 2008

Synopsis

You have to love your family. You do, even if you don't, right? You don't have to understand them or play tennis with them, but you have to love them. It's a rule, and it's the kind of rule you don't break unless you're some kind of animal.

My brother happens to be some kind of animal. My sister rides this sweet gold Honda scooter and has amazing hair. You'd hate her. My parents are vegetarian let-the-sunshine-in freaks. Lovable freaks but freaks all the same. My grand­father possesses a shocking comb-over, a kilt, about half of his original marbles, and his own golf complex. This summer, we are all working for him. It is going to be two hot, lucrative, carefree months of paradise.

Or, possibly something else.

About this title

About the Author:

Chris Lynch is a National Book Award finalist and the author of many highly acclaimed books for young adults, including The Big Game of Everything, Who the Man, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Freewill; Iceman, Shadow boxer, Gold Dust, and Slot Machine, all ALA Best Books for Young Adults; and Extreme Elvin. He also mentors aspiring writers and teaches in the creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 7–10—Introspective and curious, Jock is considering questions many people never get around to puzzling out: What is the true measure of success? Is it money? Or, is it somehow achievable merely by defining one's own vision of happiness and making it happen? While most young adults' values are defined by friends and family, Jock's moral compass lacks an obvious pole to fix upon. His hippieish parents happily operate a barbershop with a backward business plan based on convincing would-be patrons to let their hair grow, and his younger brother brazenly takes materialistic self-interest, snarkiness, and sloth to laughable heights. Jock's main challenge in this crash course in self-discovery lies in figuring out if the employer he idolizes, the owner of the underutilized golf complex on which he works—and who also happens to be his grandfather—is a worthy role model or a tortured train in the midst of derailment. Unlike Jock's parents, Grampus claims to believe in entrepreneurial ambition. He pursues those goals in idiosyncratic fashion, running and expanding his 13-hole golf course on his own terms, often shoeless and shirtless—and sometimes in a kilt. Jock begins to wonder if his grandfather's a winner, a loser, or something in between—until a series of unexpected visits and a mild stroke force the answer. The Big Game of Everything is a funny and thoughtful novel that considers the true nature of class, happiness, and success through the eyes of a teenage boy.—Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI
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About this edition

• Publisher: HarperColl
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060740353
• ISBN 13: 9780060740351
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 275