Slot Machine
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Elvin just wants to fit in—but how can he find his place when he doesn't know what to look for?
Elvin Bishop is about to attend a three-week-long high school orientation camp, where each student is "slotted" or placed on an athletic team. Chubby, fourteen-year-old Elvin knows this is not the place for him. From the start, he's told that some kids get picked on more than others, and to "try not to be one of those guys." His friends encourage him to toughen up, to avoid being a geek by acting more confident. The trouble is, Elvin doesn't quite know what kind of guy he is. And what if the kind of guy he is now isn't the kind of guy he'll be in four years?
At times laugh-out-loud funny, Slot Machine is a keenly felt story of the push and pull of wanting to belong.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Chris Lynch including rare images from the author's personal collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In its voice, setting, characters and action, this wry account of a Catholic boys' high school orientation camp is so different from Gypsy Davey, Lynch's grim chronicle of urban lowlife, that at first glance it hardly seems to be by the same author. But for all the gallows humor and guys-at-camp mayhem, there is a similar, uplifting theme about maintaining one's selfhood and convictions despite a dehumanizing environment. From the moment he's herded aboard the bus taking him and best friends Mike and Frank off for ``Twenty-One Nights with the Knights,'' the resilient narrator, Elvin Bishop (no reference to the musician of the same name), knows he's the ``fat guy'' whom everyone is going to pick on. Being disinterested in sports as well as physically inept, he fails conspicuously at various sports before he finds his ``slot''-something that everyone must have, according to the militaristic head priest. Although he would like to fit in somewhere, Elvin refuses to compromise himself just to be accepted by others. Ironically, he as well as athletic Mike find some happiness with the misfits in the scorned Arts Sectors, while handsome, popular Frank endures a humiliating, brutal hazing to become one of the campus elite. Wise, thought-provoking and strong-hearted. Ages 12-up.
