Johnny Long Legs

by Matt Christopher

Even though he is the tallest member of the basketball team, a young boy finds he is far from being the best player.

Genres: Sports, Childrens, Fiction

133 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1970

About the author

Matt Christopher is the writer young readers turn to when they're looking for fast-paced, action-packed sports novels. He is the best-selling author of more than one hundred sports books for young readers.

Matt Christopher is America's bestselling sports writer for children, with more than 100 books and sales approaching six million copies. In 1992, Matt Christopher talked about being a children's book author.

"I became interested in writing when I was 14, a freshman in high school. I was selling magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, and Liberty, and I would read the stories, particularly the adventure and mystery stories, and think how wonderful it would be to be able to write stories and make a living at it. I also read detective, horror, aviation, and sports stories and decided I would try writing them myself.

Determined to sell, I wrote a detective story a week for 40 weeks, finding the time to marry, work, and play baseball and basketball before I sold my first story in 1941, "The Missing Finger Points," for $50 to Detective Story magazine.

After writing and selling children's sports stories to magazines, I decided to write a baseball book for children. I was living in Syracuse, New York at the time, working at General Electric. I spoke about my idea to the branch librarian. She was immediately interested and told me that they needed sports stories badly. So I came up with my first children's book, The Lucky Baseball Bat. I submitted it to Little, Brown, and the book was published in 1954.

I'm sure that playing sandlot baseball and then semiprofessional baseball with a Class C club in the Canadian-American League influenced my writing. I had my own personal experiences, and I saw how other players reacted to plays, to teammates' and fans' remarks and innuendoes, to managers' orders, etc. All these had a great influence on my writing. My love of the game helped a lot, too, of course.

Out of all the books I've written, my favorite is The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. It's a fantasy, but the main character in it could be real. There are a lot of boys who would love to play baseball but, for some reason, cannot. The only difference between a real-life boy and Sylvester Coddmyer III is the appearance of a character named George Baruth, whom only Sylvester can see and who helps Sylvester become a good ballplayer.

I've written many short stories and books for both children and adults, and find that writing for children is really my niche. Being the eldest of nine children (seven boys and two girls), I've lived through a lot of problems many children live through, and I find these problems excellent examples to include in my books.

Sports have made it possible for me to meet many people with all sorts of life stories, on and off the field, and these are grist for this writer's mill. I'm far beyond playing age now, but I manage to go to both kids' and adult games just to keep up with them, and keep them fresh in my mind.Very few things make me happier than receiving fan letters from boys and girls who write that they had never cared for reading until they started to read my books. That is just about the ultimate in writing for children. I would never trade it for another profession."

Matt Christopher died on September 27, 1997. His legacy is now being carried on by his sons, Duane and Dale Christopher.

Reviews

[Aaron Schroeder · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really did not enjoy reading this book. "Johnny Long Legs" is about a boy named Johnny who is super tall, but can not jump high. He gets made fun of for his bad vertical, and it ultimately hurts his basketball skills. He then has to find out if he is a hard enough worker to get himself better. I recommend this book to people in middle school or younger, because older people will find it boring.

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember back in my grade school days that our meager school library had a bunch of Matt Christopher books and that the boys in my class were constantly checking them out. I wouldn't have touched them with a 10 foot pole (not a sports fan).

Flash forward years later. I end up in the intermediate classroom everyday after lunch, a class of four boys. They happened to be reading this book. They enjoyed it immensely. I'm still not a huge fan, but if you have some sports-loving boys, they will listen to you read this.

The main character is Johnny who is really tall and on the basketball with his stepbrother. There's a boy on a rival team who causes trouble for the two of them, but in the end, all three boys learn how to mend fences.

[Burhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book in my opnion, I like the story of it of how a tall boy cant really jump and practices to gain his skills, i like how they did that, i would recommend if you are in need of a small easy to read book because this is a easy book to understand and read and the author explains the sourroundings of the place well, although this book mainly attracts sports people since it is about sports its still good and shows the main character loving his family as much as basketball that he plays.

[Marcus Gulley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though he is the tallest member of the basketball team, a young boy finds he is far from being the best player. So he must learn to better his skills to help the team.

[Matthew]

matt christopher did a good job of making this book it has good details. and had me cheering for johnny the whole time.and the end is amazing i would of never guess it i was suprise for a hour. so if you want a good a basketball book you should get this book for sure.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a very big fan of this book because it talks about a guy who is very tall and he can't really jump high at all. So the kid has to train and work out a lot to get his vertical better. I recommend this book to younger people because it's a little kid book and is not the best book

[jacob grimsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was good

[Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

monday 30 minutes
tuesday 30 minutes
wednesday 30 minutes
thursday 30 minutes
firday 15 minutes

[Garrett O'Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johnny Long Legs by Matt Christopher I loved this book I thought it was pretty inspiration and I would recommend this to people uspecially basketball players.

[Lance Rademacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book and I thought that it was an inspirational book and people would like this book and mostly people who like sport books.

[Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have been better. Is it about a boy that plays basketball and he is really tall because of his legs. He isn't the best at basketball because he is uncoordinated.

[Nathan Schlehlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised how Johnny never got angry with Jim (a sloppy and mean boy)

[Jayden Hauff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best book but its about basketball so i guess its ok

[Juwuan R.]

Johnnu long legs was a good inspiration book and relates to all basketball player

[Hudson Hawes]

This month I read Johnny Long Legs by Matt Christopher. I liked the book because I play basketball and it was a short book. My favorite character was Johnny because he moved away from his home and played basketball. He was shy and didn't talk a lot his first days. My favorite quote of the book "Coach Dates told me to run and jump as much as I can." Johnny said this to his dad, because he can't jump very high.

[Will Garlock]

In this book Johnny Long Legs by Matt Christopher which takes place in the 1990. The characters in this book are Johnny who is the main character there in his brother Toby and his mom and step dad. Some things Johnny likes to do is play basketball and play in the snow. One of the main problems in this story are that Johnny has long legs and every body thinks oh he will be great at basketball. He has long legs so he will be able to jump really high. But in that case Johnny can't jump that high and gets made fun of at school because of his lack of ability to jump. This book is about a kid who moves from New York and goes out for the basketball team and makes it. Then he realizes that he is only on the team because he is tall and not because of his skill. I really enjoyed this book and I think you would enjoy this book too. Even if you were not into basketball or and sports I still would recommend that you give this book a try. Like I said I really enjoy this book. Maybe you should tryout for basketball too. If you read this review I hope you give this book a try because I really loved it. It has been one of my all time favorite books. It's great!