BIG CITY COOL, includes short story by John H. Ritter, baseball novelist

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Big City Cool:
Short Stories about Urban Youth
Includes "Old School/Fu-Char School" by John H. Ritter

Big City Cool bookcover

Big City Cool: Short Stories about Urban Youth
Edited by M. Jerry and Helen S. Weiss
ISBN 0-89255-278-6
Persea Books, 2002, 181pp. $8.95

What reviewers are saying about Big City Cool:

       "This collection provides 14 reader-friendly stories that address not only concerns about being cool, but many serious issues with which adolescents grapple. The book includes stories by award winning authors including Walter Dean Myers, Amy Tan, John H. Ritter, and Judith Ortiz Cofer. Michael Rosovsky's "Freezer Burn" is about a boy and his father as they come to grips with their mother's and wife's death from ovarian cancer. Sharon Dennis Wyeth recalls her own experiences with racial stereotyping as a mixed race child when she writes about her family's attempt to buy real estate in "White Real Estate." Amy Tan contributes an excerpt from The Joy Luck Club that portrays the pressure to succeed that is placed on children of immigrants. Joseph Geha places his story within the context of the September 11 tragedies. In John H. Ritter's "Old School/Fu Char School," a boy risks his reputation to befriend a strange girl, and plays his trumpet to save her life.
       Like classic short stories, the ones in this contemporary collection quickly engage the reader. Like the other short story collections by M. Jerry and Helen Weiss, From Our Experience to Another and Lost and Found, they provide fine literature for independent or classroom reading."
       --Lisa Winkler, The ALAN Review

From Publishers Weekly:
"Walter Dean Myers, Amy Tan and John H. Ritter are among the contributors to Big City Cool: Short Stories About Urban Youth, a collection of 14 stories (some previously published) that get to the heart of growing up in the city."

From School Library Journal:
"Grade 7 Up-A timely collection of short stories. While all of the selections have urban settings such as Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC, they share the universal emotions of young people as they experience a variety of losses, victories, pains, and successes. Racial, economic, and cultural backgrounds range from an Arab-American coping with September 11 to a Puerto Rican girl facing racism for the first time. Each well-written story shares a unique view of its city and its inhabitants; all have wide appeal and emotional impact."

If you'd like, you may order a copy of Big City Cool.

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