pop

Blog Jason Tester
  

Rating ****POP goes beyond being a good read for sports fans. Yes, there's a lot of football action -- the team deals with their conflicts while trying to remain undefeated for a second straight season -- but the action is nothing compared to the page-turning drama of Charlie and his secret.

Setting- Marcus, the new kid in town, wants to tryout for the undefeated high school football team in Pop, by Gordon Korman. While training by himself at a local park, he meets Charlie, a massive 50-something-year-old man with powerful football skills that he shares with Marcus. Estranged from the teammates who don’t want to accept an outsider, Marcus’s growing friendship with Charlie gives him a sense of belonging. But Marcus also begins to see that something about Charlie isn’t quite right. For an old guy, he’s a charismatic prankster who acts like a big kid, can’t remember Marcus’s name and runs away at the first sign of trouble. Then Marcus discovers that Charlie is actually a former NFL linebacker known as “The King of Pop.”When Marcus moves to a new town in the dead of summer, he doesn't know a soul. While practicing football for impending tryouts, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with an older man. Charlie is a charismatic prankster—and the best football player Marcus has ever seen. He can't believe his good luck when he finds out that Charlie is actually Charlie Popovich, or "the King of Pop," as he had been nicknamed during his career as an NFL linebacker. But that's not all. There is a secret about Charlie that his family is desperate to hide.

Main Character- Marcus, is new in a town where the high school football team is legendary
Main plot events- Pop is an engaging, worthwhile, and touching read. Concussion-induced Alzheimer’s is central to the story, as main character Charlie, a fifty-four-year-old former NFL player suffers severe memory loss and confusion as a result of too many head injuries from football. The relationship between Charlie and Marcus is an unlikely and special one. Marcus takes Charlie on a trip against the wishes of Charlie’s family by lying and sneaking off, and Marcus gets in trouble with the law on several occasions. Underage drinking, a destructive and unsupervised teen party, and boy/girl drama amount to relatively normal teen behavior. It should be noted that this story ends tragically when Charlie falls to his death.

Recommendation- I would recommend this book if you like adventures and football NFL. I liked the book a lot.