Losers Take All by David Klass - ADVISABLE

Klass, David Losers Take All, 306 pages.  Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015.  $18.  Language: R (80+ swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content: G; Violence: PG-13 (bullying, sports violence, father’s anger)

Jack Logan is not the sports stud his father and two older brothers were.  He would gladly finish high school without ever participating.  When the school’s new principal insists that every senior join a team, Jack decides to form a third tier soccer club and they call themselves The Losers.  A surreptitious video of the principal screaming and swearing at them after their first disastrous game brings unwanted fame to the group, additional hostility from the principal, and heightened tension in the family.  What are Jack’s real priorities in all of this?

I’m not sure why this sat on my TBR pile for more than a year.  Klass’s book is a definite indictment of the meathead sports climate that still pervades many schools.  But that is not the only point of the book.  He touches of family and the nature of friendship; he also challenges the idea of being loyal of loyalty’s sake. 

HS – ADVISABLE; MS – OPTIONAL (swears).  Cindy, Library Teacher