Over the course of the year, a camaraderie develops among the swimmers. Until he realizes putting together a team consisting of people who 'would look most out of place in a Cutter High School letter jacket' (namely, 'one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a psychopath') would be an excellent way of pissing off those people whose lives seem to revolve around said Cutter High School letter jackets. is therefore reluctant to participate at first. J.'s teachers, mostly in an effort to avoid being an assistant coach on the wrestling team, proposes starting a swim team, T. doesn't want to play football or basketball, despite the avid pursuit of the coaches. He's also got a problem with authority figures telling him what to do, another reason why T. Not cheering when an opponent gets hurt or an obsession with letter jackets, like it is in Cutter. J., should be about sportsmanship and competing against an opponent at his best. Politically correct would be African-American, Japanese-American, and what? Northern-European American?' (Though you can't exactly tell from the book cover.) He's one of the few people of color in town and one of the best athletes in school, even though he refuses to join any of its sports teams. (full legal name: The Tao Jones), adopted as a child by white parents, is 'black. Then I read Whale Talk and said, 'Oh, so that's why people are such big Chris Crutcher fans.'Ĭutter High School is obsessed with sports. I'd read a couple of Chris Crutcher books before and liked them well enough, but (and this may be heresy for a YA librarian) I didn't think they were all that amazing. Then one or two or three books later, you stumble across the book that makes the proverbial lightbulb click on and you finally understand what the big deal is. You know, when you read your first novel in a certain genre or subgenre, or by a particular author, and you enjoyed it, but haven't been converted into a fan. Sometimes it takes more than one book to figure out what the fuss is about.

Book whale talk