The Warriors by Joseph Bruchac

The book I read is called "the Warriors" by: Joseph Bruchac, first copyright date 2003, realistic fiction, sports book. This book is about a young boy name Jake. Jake is an Iroquois lacrosse player that lives at a reservation with his mother. Jake is a very talented lacrosse player. Jake wants to go to a very prestigious private school that has an amazing lacrosse team. Jake gets excepted into the school and attends the school the next year. Jake does not fit in very well at the school because he is a native American that lived on a reservation for a very long time. To most he is an outcast, but Jake doesn't care to much. He is focused on lacrosse and only lacrosse. When the lacrosse season starts, he is ignored by everyone, except the coach. His talent is better than all of the other players but he still is ignored. Jake battles being an outcast throughout the story and in the end he succeeds. The overall theme of the book is to always work hard in anything you do, even if you don't fit in, you will come out successful.

This story is told in a way that I can see what Jake is doing from the words of someone, of third person point of view. He also uses forms of first person in the story to pull the reader into the story. Jake is accepted into a new school where he is not accepted because he is a Native American. He is ignored on the lacrosse team by everyone except the coach. He is the best player on the team but he is still not excepted. Jake feels as though he will never be accepted until coach puts him in for the first time. He plays very well and makes no errors. He is finally somewhat excepted by the team. All is well until the coach is shot by a shooter on campus. Throughout the story Jake constantly tries to be successful. The intended audience is probably ages 9-11. The general field or genre of the book would be sports realistic fiction. The book fits into me because I love lacrosse with all my heart. There is no sport I would rather play. This book is about lacrosse so, the fact that this book is about lacrosse made me instantly want to read it. The author kept me interested by including a lot of actual lacrosse game play. He described all of the moves and such Jake did while he was playing. The authors style is very ordinary, he lists the information and occasionally writes something interesting. Like most realistic fiction stories that involve sports.

This book affected me because the theme of work hard and be successful really changed my mind about a lot of things. I realized to be successful you have to work hard. Now lets be honest, this book didn't really completely change my mind about everything, but it did help me a little bit. It did bring up memories of books I have read in the past. Like "Head Case". That book was about lacrosse in Native American community's. The book really taught an important message that I will learn from and use for the rest of my life.

The story in this book is very creative and original. But it lacks the writing qualities other books have. The book is very boring and it does not catch my attention at any moment except the ending. I was very disappointed in the writing quality of Joseph Bruchac. I recommend this book to people that play lacrosse only. If you do not play lacrosse, you are wasting your time with this book.

Carver Skarnulis
11/17/13
RATING: 2/5