Playing Without The Ball

PLOT SUMMARY: I read the book Playing Without The Ball by Rich Wallace. This book is about a 16 year old boy named Jay who loves to play basketball, but he is an average player. He isn't good enough to play on his school's varsity team so he gets cut. Beacause Jay loves basketball so much he joins the church league. In the end of the book Jay's team wins the championships.
Jay's parents are divorced. He used to live with his father, but when Jay got old enough to take care of himself, his father moved out to California without Jay and now Jay lives by himself. Jay does have one parental guardian. His name is Shorty and he owns the bar, Shorty's, where Jay works as a cook. There is a band that plays at Shorty's a lot. Jay gets to know the lead singer of the band. Her name is Spit. She is a laid back girl that takes drugs and just goes along with almost everything. Jay meets a girl named Julie. Jay falls inlove with Julie. He wants to ask her out and when he does Spit gets jelous and she acts like she is going out whit Jay. Julie gets mad and leaves the bar. Jay doesn't think she will ever come back, but she does and Jay apologizes. She accepts the apologie because Spit explained to her what had happened. Jay then asks Julie if she wants to go out on a date with him and she says "yes".

CHARACTER: The main character in Playing Without The Ball is Jay. Jay is a smart kid. I don't know about his grades, but he is smart because he doesn't get caught up in all of the drugs that are all around him. He could easily get away with it because he lives by himself, but he doesn't.

MY THOUGHTS: I liked the book, but i didn't love it. I think the author added in too much information that wasn't needed. I liked the plot a lot. Most basketball books are about the star basketball player, but this book is about an average player who didn't even make varsity.

REDING STRATEGY: One of the 7 reading stratagies I used was infrencing. I infrenced that Jay wouldn't make the varsity team. I also inferenced that Spit would get jelous of Jay because of Julie

AUTHOR INFORMATION: I have never heard of Rich Wallace ever before. I thought he was an average author