Blog 1 - Crackback

A crackback block in football comes from the outside and it can destroy you if you're not careful. It is very surprising and you don’t see it coming. This is a great title for the novel Crackback by John Coy because it is about a junior high school football player named Miles Manning who along the way of his high school life faces many surprising obstacles related to his life and football like his parents arguing, girls, steroids, a new coach and staying starter at his position.

I think the theme of this novel could be conflict because he deals with so much of it. There are small struggles in his family with his parent having opposite feelings about how to deal with telling him about the death of his brother. The title of the novel Crackback even suggests struggles he is having because he is hit with surprising issues that he has to deal with quite suddenly. He also faces a struggle with his friends pressuring him into using steroids to get big for football.

The author John Coy uses the point of view of the main character to tell story of Crackback. I think speaking in the first person was very effective because he gets to address his issues the way he understood them.

The issue of steroids came up in this book that would relate to a lot of adolescent athletes who want to look big and strong but it’s not the right way to do it. Another issue for my age group in this novel would be dealing with girls and having the confidence to approach them and ask them out.

I don’t really know any connections to anything we’ve done so far.

I liked this book so much that I couldn’t really find anything for the author to improve on. Some of my favorite parts in this book were when they were playing games against other schools and the author would describe some of the plays and touchdowns so well it made feel like I was in the game too. If the author had more games in it I think the book would be a more interesting read for me.

I would definitely recommend this book for other teenagers but mostly teenagers that enjoy playing football or just enjoy watching football. I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger children because in the novel it talks about drug use and it also includes some inappropriate language that they might not understand.

The novel Crackback makes use of rhetorical terms and one that sticks out in my mind is a pun. When Miles Manning gets taken out of his staring position and is on the bench there are other kids making puns about electricity just to kill time. An example of a pun is when Sam Hunter (a fellow second-string football teammate) says, “Generate some puns we can plug into.” He also says, “Yeah, keep them current.” (Pg. 123, paragraph 3) Another rhetorical term in the novel Crackback is a simile. The main character compares himself to a mattress . “Easy Rest Mattress, like me, is sleepy Sunday morning.

Overall I thought this book was one of the best I’ve read so pick it up.

By: Logan Semple