Ironman

Crutcher, Chris. (1995). Ironman. New York: HarperTempest.

Annotation: Because of how his dad has treated him in the past, Bo has had an ager welling inside him his whole life. Faced with getting kicked out of school, Bo is forced to attend Anger Management classes and for the first time in his life come face to face with these issues, while he is training for the Yukon Jack triathlon.

Justification for Nomination: At first, I was totally confused and did not like the switching between third-person and first-person writing. I felt like I couldn’t keep track of who was who and what was happening because there was some overlap and sometimes Bo was Bo and sometimes he was “me” (as in his letters to Larry King).

I really liked the strong positive themes throughout this book. Bo had every reason to give up, but he found something to keep him going.

I thought this book was a raw and real depiction of a boy with so much hurt stuffed inside him from so many years of struggles with his dad, and he faced them in a real way.

I loved his descriptions of the others in the Anger Management class. They all were so unique and I loved watching them come together to be Bo’s stotans.

I also felt that even through there was no definitive resolution in the end, Bo and his dad had faced enough of their problems to be able to have them in the open and work towards a solution.

Genre: Coming of Age/Sports