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38th out of 84 books
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177 voters
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Whale Talk
There’s bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don’t have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant), the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to find their places in a school that has no place for them. T.J. is convinced that a varsity...more
Mass Market Paperback, 224 pages
Published
December 10th 2002
by Laurel Leaf
(first published April 1st 2001)
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this is the last of the "banned books" lot. i liked it more than i thought i would, and i think i liked it more than this three-star indicates, but i am somehow unable to give it a four. because this star-rating system is just too scientific and important, right?
i almost didn't read this one. i read what it was about - an all-boy swim team called the mermen who are social misfits but who bond together on their long bus trips where they share their secrets and learn to trust...more
i almost didn't read this one. i read what it was about - an all-boy swim team called the mermen who are social misfits but who bond together on their long bus trips where they share their secrets and learn to trust...more
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Just finished this book awesome book. The story is heart wrenching. It took me a while - 50 pages - to get into it, but it came highly recommended. My sophomores will read this during this school year. It explores many issues like child abuse, abuse of women and violence towards others. The setting is a high school where there is always abuse.
There is a line in the book that has become a part of me. But I don't have the book right now - so I can't add it yet in the text form. The lin...more
There is a line in the book that has become a part of me. But I don't have the book right now - so I can't add it yet in the text form. The lin...more
Meg
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
teen boys, sports fans, reluctant readers
An adopted black high school senior in very white central Washington brings together a crew of outcasts for a swim team. Good considering the rather ho-hum premise. The main character is believable and a strong narrator, the plot is interesting and well-paced. Good for a reluctant teen reader, especially one with an interest in sports. Some language, not too bad. An interesting look at racism, sports obsession, and what makes a family. Also good in that the adoption thing is presented more as a ...more
A good, thought-provoking, quick read. There is one event in this book that I swear will haunt me forever...but I wont spoil it...
Another of my fave books! T.J. Jones is an adopted, racially-mixed senior living in a small town in Washington. Though very athletically gifted, he refuses to join any organized school sports because of the almost "God-like" treatment received by the jocks. When his favorite English teacher Mr. Simet ask T.J. to join a swim team (despite the fact that the school does not have a pool), T.J. sees an opportunity to infuriate the jocks by putting together a motley group of misfit swimme...more
This is one of those books that sticks with you, characters and circumstances refusing to turn loose of your thoughts and emotions months after you stop reading about them. Things start out innocently when super-talented (athletically and intellectually) T.J. agrees to bail out a favorite teacher by throwing together a swim team. He also sees the team as a way to give the nasty jock contingent at his school the finger by recruiting misfits and helping them to earn letter jackets.
T.J...more
T.J...more
T.J. Jones is tall, handsome, intelligent, athletically gifted, adopted, and angry. He despises how his high school honors athletics over anything else, and refuses to take part in any organized team, much to the frustration of the coaches. Fed up by the jocks in his school and the Athletic Council who award varsity letterman's jackets like the Congressional Medal of Honor, T.J., along with his English teacher Mr. Simet, organize a swim team and recruit a group of misfits and outcasts that will...more
This was absolutely fantastic. The narration seemed a little older and wiser than a high school senior boy at times, but that is pretty much my only complaint. Well, ok, and the ending was a wee bit too perfect, but that's where the flaws end.
For myriad, complicated reasons, TJ Jones assembles a rag-tag swim team for the first time in his high school's career, made up of some of the biggest outcasts. Throw in his dad's insanely awful personal history, his own demons, a therapist, thei...more
For myriad, complicated reasons, TJ Jones assembles a rag-tag swim team for the first time in his high school's career, made up of some of the biggest outcasts. Throw in his dad's insanely awful personal history, his own demons, a therapist, thei...more
Sam Desmarais
ELA G
Book Review
In English class, we have been reading “banned books.” And I would definitely recommend my book Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher; mainly because of the lessons it taught me. I have learned to stand up for what I believe in through reading this line “But the deer wouldn’t, move so I through myself over the baby deer in hope they would not shoot, and when Wyberg and Barbour tried to pull me off I held on like a bulldogger.” To me, this is standin...more
ELA G
Book Review
In English class, we have been reading “banned books.” And I would definitely recommend my book Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher; mainly because of the lessons it taught me. I have learned to stand up for what I believe in through reading this line “But the deer wouldn’t, move so I through myself over the baby deer in hope they would not shoot, and when Wyberg and Barbour tried to pull me off I held on like a bulldogger.” To me, this is standin...more
I read Whale talk, by Chris Crutcher. The plot revolves around sports, even if you aren’t that interested in sports this book is still a page turner and I recommend it. I liked this book because it contains life lessons that you don’t realize until you see them in the text. The book is about a school that surrounds around sports and a kid named TJ Jones and how he stands up and brings together the “misfits”, aka the kids that can’t make any team and fit in .This book is also good because it’s ...more
I thought that this book was good when it came to the plot,but the story was sort of slow. I loved the characters, but the story was one of those books that is very easy to put down. It was not until about half way that i actually started to get into the book. There are allot of sad parts but the main character T.J. provides the up beat in the story. Sure, he has his fare share of sadness in the book, but what he is trying to do throughout the book keeps the reader hopeful.
T.J. is a p...more
T.J. is a p...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
When you start reading Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher, you might take the wonderful humor and cynicism of the main character, T.J., as a sign that this is going to be the usual coming-of-age, snarky-teen-protagonist tale common in YAL. The guy is named “The Tao Jones” for Pete’s sake; the jokes practically write themselves. However, some readers might glance over the very heavy and heart-wrenching back-story of T.J. because of his humor, but his tragedy is a better foreshadowing of the themes of t...more
Summary: This is a wonderful book about a young man, TJ Jones, a nonconformist kind of guy and the events of a year in high school. He is a talented swimmer and a gifted athlete who doesn't want to paly sports for the school. TJ has more issues that most teenagers with his black-white-japanese- American heritage and drug addict birth mother. He lives with his adopted parents, who are wonderful and loving. Tj decides to get a swim team together at the school after he seeing a varsity letter ...more
Summary:
Life for T.J. Jones is as unique as his exotic DNA. Born to an African and Japanese-American father and a Northern European-American mother, T. J. was adopted by a white couple who live in the small logging community of Cutter, Washington. Now in his senior year of high school, T. J. is intelligent, athletic, and against “all that is wrong with Cutter High”. Bigotry and the school jocks appear to run the town and high school. So T. J. decides to make a place for himself and his ...more
Life for T.J. Jones is as unique as his exotic DNA. Born to an African and Japanese-American father and a Northern European-American mother, T. J. was adopted by a white couple who live in the small logging community of Cutter, Washington. Now in his senior year of high school, T. J. is intelligent, athletic, and against “all that is wrong with Cutter High”. Bigotry and the school jocks appear to run the town and high school. So T. J. decides to make a place for himself and his ...more
Whale Talk
Summary:
The Tao Jones better known as T.J. Jones is athletic and smart. He is multi-ethnic and was adopted. He is close with his adoptive parents and Georgia his therapist. As we move on T.J. decides to get a swim team together to fight against the athletic prejudice in his high school. He gathers up a crew of kids that would not particularly fit any other athletic program and together they work well as a team and friends. Chris Coughlin is a person that T.J. b...more
Summary:
The Tao Jones better known as T.J. Jones is athletic and smart. He is multi-ethnic and was adopted. He is close with his adoptive parents and Georgia his therapist. As we move on T.J. decides to get a swim team together to fight against the athletic prejudice in his high school. He gathers up a crew of kids that would not particularly fit any other athletic program and together they work well as a team and friends. Chris Coughlin is a person that T.J. b...more
T. J. Jones (whose real name is The Tao Jones) is a senior at Cutter High School and has avoided all organized sports much to the chagrin of all the coaches. When a mentally handicapped student, Chris, is harassed for wearing his dead brother’s letter jacket, it gives T. J. a reason to join the school’s first ever swim team and challenge the letterman’s jacket rule. There are a couple of slight problems: he’s the only member, the coach puts him in charge of recruiting, and they don’t have a s...more
PERSONAL REACTION: I found Whale Talk engaging, funny, and heartbreaking. The characters have depth and substance. The main character, T. J., narrates the story. He brings together a group of misfits, including a sociopath, a boy with a prosthetic leg, and a very brainy why-use-a-nickel-word-when-you-can-use-a-fifty-cent-word, to form the Cutter High School swim team. Oh, and the high school has no pool, but T.J. has very good reasons for making the team work. He ends up getting so much more f...more
Lori Holbein-Gutierrez
rated it
Personal Reaction:
Realistic Fiction is one of my favorite genres. The book was slow at the beginning, but quickly picked up the pace with more details about the members of the high school swim team. I always like a story about the underdogs and that is what the swim team is. I also liked the diverse backgrounds of the teenage boys on the swim team. They all came from different backgrounds each with their own set of issues that they are dealing with. I loved the character, T.J. Jon...more
Realistic Fiction is one of my favorite genres. The book was slow at the beginning, but quickly picked up the pace with more details about the members of the high school swim team. I always like a story about the underdogs and that is what the swim team is. I also liked the diverse backgrounds of the teenage boys on the swim team. They all came from different backgrounds each with their own set of issues that they are dealing with. I loved the character, T.J. Jon...more
TJ, a multi-racial adoptee, is one-third of his small eastern Washington town’s minority population. The jocks from his high school, and the jocks who have graduated but can’t seem to leave high school behind, have all the unappealing characteristics one attributes to small-town uneducated boys obsessed with violent sports, including racist attitudes and complete disdain for boys like TJ who are athletically gifted in many sports, yet choose not to participate in them. When one of the jocks cont...more
Whale talk has become a personal favorite, an inspirational story between discrimination, racism, and athletic hardships. The Tao Jones is such a heroic figure, everything about this book must be read! This is not only just a book to read because you were lying in bed bored of life, this is a book where you can relate human society into and become involve in T.J's heroic actions, and his determination. This book is a place where your feelings can be shared with, and you can agree without being h...more
Janette
added it
Since I've stopped giving stars (it always felt too judgmental--especially since I see a lot of authors) I'm just going to say what I enjoyed about a book and what I wish had been different.
The things I appreciated: TJ was a great character. You cheered for him through the whole book. You wished there were more people like him who went to your high school. Heck, you wished there was anyone like that who went to your high school.
There were parts that made me smile and ...more
The things I appreciated: TJ was a great character. You cheered for him through the whole book. You wished there were more people like him who went to your high school. Heck, you wished there was anyone like that who went to your high school.
There were parts that made me smile and ...more
The Tao Jones, better known as TJ, is an all-around athlete. However, he’s never played on a school team. A biracial child adopted by a lily-white couple in rural Utah, TJ has been avoiding the athletic community in his hometown his whole life. Because in this town, high school athletics are practically a religion and TJ just doesn’t see himself being a teenage god. However, when the jocks at his high school take things too far and begin bullying a special needs student, TJ takes matters into h...more
While this book includes great issues that no doubt need to be addressed in young adult literature, I felt it lacked something more important: a believable and relatable main character. We felt that TJ was painted as an aloof but successful and sometimes over-zealous youth but came off more like a pretentious snob. What he did for the lesser characters in the novel was generous but his motives were a little off-putting and he spoke too highly of himself frequently. The rest of the characters see...more
whale talk was an awesomely funny book, and yet it contained some serious thought-provoking issues that made me sick to my stomach to think that there are still people out there that judge by skin color, mental abilities, gender, age, etc. and use it as fuel to harass others. I loved T.J.'s personality - he was just so full of life that I couldn't help but smile most of the time. Plus his swimmates were also very funny. Sometimes it was hard to keep them straight, but their personalities were so...more
Being popular and good-hearted does not usually go hand in hand in high school, but Crutcher does a good portrayal of a heroic teenager with T.J., creating someone who is admirable in almost every way. Good-hearted, funny, and chivalrous, who wouldn’t fall for T.J.? Well, maybe the jocks or bullies who are tired of T.J. standing up to them and making them look dumb with his smart mouth.
Not only does T.J. stand up for the school rejects, he also defends a battered student against her b...more
Not only does T.J. stand up for the school rejects, he also defends a battered student against her b...more
I tend to really enjoy YA novels, but Crutcher's leave me with the feeling that really good literature does: that the book is pure entertainment, and at the same time something far more universal than that.
This is the second of his books that I've enjoyed. He draws you in with wit and humor, and then moves into more important territory, and you're caught by the feeling that he has Something Important to Say. And he does. He says it plainly and beautifully and the wisdom he has gained...more
This is the second of his books that I've enjoyed. He draws you in with wit and humor, and then moves into more important territory, and you're caught by the feeling that he has Something Important to Say. And he does. He says it plainly and beautifully and the wisdom he has gained...more
Whale Talk definitely has aspects that would appeal to adolescent readers. First off, there is the adoption. Many student would find this to be an interesting subject, whether or not they were adopted themselves. Then there is the aspect of students being bullied. This is something that sadly occurs at a lot of schools. A lot of adolescents may find comfort in reading about teens who rally together and work towards a goal that no bully can take from them. This ties into a last aspect, whic...more
This book was great. I expected no less from Chris Crutcher after reading Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, but this one was even better. The narrator, T.J., is a really interesting character, with a great sense of humor and a strong sense of honor and a lot of rage inside. Crutcher's background working with abused kids is really put to use to create very realistic, troubled characters. (There's also the Awesome English Teacher, one of my favorite characters.)
It's about a mixed-race hig...more
It's about a mixed-race hig...more
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Chris Crutcher's writing is controversial, and has been frequently challenged and even banned by individuals who want to censor his books by removing them from libraries and classrooms. Running Loose and Athletic Shorts were on the ALA's top 100 list of most frequently challenged books for 1990-2000. His books generally feature teens coping with serious problems, including abusive parents, racial ...more
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“...racist thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at.”
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34 people liked it
“I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it maybe travels two blocks. A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. If they think it, they say it...Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.”
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21 people liked it
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