Lessons of the Game

by Diane Gonzales Bertrand

Overview

Popular young-adult author Diane Gonzales Bertrand (Sweet Fifteen) has scored a touchdown with this story of student teacher Kaylene Morales and her surprise reunion with old friend Alex Garrison, now a coach and fellow instructor at Leon Creek High School. As Kaylene and Alex become reacquainted, they learn the difficulties—and the necessity—of balancing their working lives with the search for personal happiness outside the school zone. Teenaged readers will rapidly become immersed in enjoyable scenes of football games, pizza dinners, school parties, family arguments, and locker-room banter. At the same time, they may find themselves pondering such dilemmas as the conflicts between athletic and academic demands and between professional duties and personal aspirations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611927313
Publisher:	Arte Publico Press
Publication date:	10/30/1998
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	161 KB
Age Range:	11 - 16 Years

About the Author

DIANE GONZALES BERTRAND has written stories and poems since childhood, but never saw books that connected to her own Mexican-American heritage. Fifteen years ago she found Arte Público Press, a Houston publisher who welcomed her familia-friendly young-adult novels like Sweet Fifteen, Lessons of the Game and Close to the Heart. Then Diane wrote the children’s novel Alicia’s Treasure and two award-winning novels for middle school students Trino’s Choice, and Trino’s Time.

Editorial Reviews

Kaylene Morales was excited to start her first job as a student teacher at Leon Creek School. But her glee quickly turned to embarrassment. While attempting to break up a fight between two students, she accidentally doused a fellow teacher, Alex Garrison, with water. It turns out that Kaylene knew Alex years before when she had a crush on him. Now, he is an assistant football coach at the same school she is beginning her teaching career. This well-textured novel traces the relationship between the two old friends, from this awkward encounter to love affair. Their ups and downs are ably described by the author who wonderfully outlines the issues confronting them, including those of workplace romance and the seemingly round the clock demands of Alex's coaching job. Although the author occasionally describes Kaylene perhaps too traditionally, as looking to please her 'man,' their relationship and its inherent compromises are artfully sketched, in a way that young readers will appreciate and relate to.

Children's Literature - Bruce Adelson

A new student teacher and a young San Antonio high school football coach score "a touchdown for love" in this steamy but decorous romance. Before Kaylene Morales even reports to her supervising teacher, she manages to slop mop water over hunky coach Alex Garrison. The relationship develops from there (though it actually began ten years before, when Alex was her older brother's classmate and she had a mad crush on him), into long phone conversations, dinners, passionate necking on the sofa, a falling out while Kaylene frets over Alex's preoccupation with that "hard-hearted wench" football, and finally a climactic clinch and proposal. In the meantime, as Alex juggles his growing love with the heavy demands of Texas football, Kaylene throws out her dull lesson plans for innovative new ones, and endures mild challenges from her students. Romance fans and other tenderhearts will sigh over Bertrand's mauve prose, no matter how unpolished it is. (Fiction. 11-13) .

Kirkus Reviews