A review by booksong
Crash by Jerry Spinelli

4.0

They call him Crash because that's what he does, crashes through life with no regard for everything around him.

John "Crash" Coogan is entering 7th grade in his middle school career. And it's shaping up to be an interesting one indeed. Crash is ready to hang with his best friend Michael, dominate the football team, and get to know Jane Forbes, his suddenly drop-dead beautiful classmate, a little better.

And he wants to continue the longstanding tradition of harassing Penn Webb.

Penn Webb, scrawny, nonviolent, vegetarian, unfailingly friendly, and raised by Quakers. The polar opposite of arrogant jock Crash. Since childhood Crash has scorned Penn's attempts at friendship, instead making him a target for bullying. Everything has run perfectly fine...until that 7th grade year.

The year that Crash's beloved uncle ends up in the hospital. The year that Crash's little sister goes on an impassioned environmental crusade. And the year when everything brash, cocky Crash expects to happen...doesn't.

A hilarious, touching, painful story of one fairly unsympathetic teenage hero who is changed by the most unlikely people...and comes out on the other side as someone no one could have recognized.