Customer Reviews

Pop [With Earbuds]

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I started reading this book one night and two hours later and way past midnight I was still turning pages. What may be even more unusual about that is that I am hardly Gordon Korman's target audience. I'm a middle-aged woman, albeit a football fan. Marcus and Charlie are great characters. You can feel Marcus's anguish at being the new kid in town, school, and team. You get a sense of Charlie trying to hang on to the last shreds of himself. For adults, the story may be a bit precious in places. All the pieces fit together a little too neatly, and we're never in doubt that in the end there will be a big game and it will be up to Marcus to win it. That's hardly a spoiler, but there's a lot more to the ending and it's a surprise. Young teen boys should really enjoy this story. It would be great for slightly younger kids too, but there is some kissing and sexual innuendo.

POP as a title contains a double meaning -- one, it is the nickname of Charlie Popovich, an ex-NFL star suffering from Alzheimer's, and two, it is the sound you get when you slam your helmet into someone in football. It comes as no surprise, but "Pop" likes to pop people, and our protagonist, Marcus Jordan, finds out the hard way when he meets the 50-something Charlie at the public park one day while tossing around a football. The unlikely meeting leads to regular practice between the old-timer and the youngster, who is new to town and anxious to try out for the undefeated high school team.

With plenty of football action, this book will appeal to reluctant readers as well as sports fans, but it also takes a social angle as Marcus learns that the high school quarterback whose job he covets is the son of Charlie and none too pleased that Marcus is a) angling for his starting QB job, and b) practicing football with his legendary dad at the park. What's worse, both Troy and his sister Chelsea are bent on keeping Charlie's condition -- Alzheimer's as a result of multiple concussions during his NFL career -- a secret. Want more for the mix? How about Alyssa, head cheerleader and looker who on-again/off-again dates Troy, taking up an interest in Marcus?

Veteran YA author Gordon Korman pulls all the levers in this book to maximize the entertainment value. There's some suspense, some humor, and some learning about an important disease neatly brought together in one package here. My one reservation is a common one in the YA field -- the lack of reality in some of the situations and events. The more important point, however, is that this book is compelling and equal parts sports, humor, and social drama -- a potent combination. Recommended.

Gold Star Award Winner!

If I was asked to write a one word review for POP by Gordon Korman, I would write - Fantastic! Once readers start passing this one around, it may never touch a bookshelf again.

Quarterback want-to-be Marcus Jordan is packed up and moved to the mountains of New York state by his divorced mother. It's no big loss in the dad department considering he refers to his father as Comrade Stalin. He knows he and his mother are better off out of Kansas and on their own, but it's the summer before his junior year, and his dream of playing varsity quarterback may not survive the move.

With no friends yet to occupy his time and definitely no fellow football companions to work out with, Marcus heads to the local city park to create his own workout. He is attempting some passing practice when a burly, middle-aged guy shows up and sprints into the park and picks off one of his passes. Before he knows it, the guy is putting him through his paces. They are passing the ball like crazy and then running patterns and hitting each other like it's the biggest game of the season. And then the guy is gone.

Marcus learns the man's name is Charlie. Without any regular schedule or plan, they start working out together in the park. Charlie just sort of shows up - maybe one day, but not the next, and rarely ever at the same time. Even with crazy and unreliable appearances, the time Marcus spends with Charlie is really improving his game.

Whenever Marcus tries to find out exactly who Charlie is, he runs into a roadblock. Their time together is basically all about football - until the day a wild pass ends up crashing through the side window of a car parked along the street. Charlie disappears faster than Marcus believed possible, leaving him to write a note to the car owner promising to pay the repair bill. After that more strange things begin to happen. Marcus notices that when he and Charlie leave the park to grab a Gatorade or a bag of ice to ice down an injury, Charlie simply grabs what they need from a local store and leaves without paying a cent. Weird... but the weirdness is outweighed by the fantastic football knowledge Marcus is gaining from this awesome athlete.

As school starts that fall, Marcus finds it difficult to fit into the already stacked football roster. The team has a super reputation and is heading into a second undefeated season. There seems to be no hope that he will play quarterback. In his attempt to make friends and fit in with the team, Marcus learns that Charlie is the father of the team's star quarterback. It makes sense that such a great player would have a talented son, but Marcus also discovers that there is some sort of family secret and Charlie seems to be at the center of it.

Gordon Korman is at his best in POP. He has wrapped a tremendous amount into this fast-paced novel. In addition to football action, readers will experience Marcus's "new guy" frustration, emotions twisted by his parents' divorce, and the discovery of a horribly debilitating disease. Readers will find it difficult to stop reading once they have met Marcus and Charlie.

Run, don't walk, to the nearest library or bookstore to get a copy of POP.

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

When sixteen-year-old Marcus Jordan moves to Kennesaw, New York, he doesn't exactly find a welcoming committee waiting for him. It's a little hard to make friends in the middle of the summer when you don't know anyone in town, so Marcus spends his days at Three Alarm Park, practicing his football skills alone and waiting for the school year to start.

It's while Marcus is honing his game that he finally makes a friend - an unlikely friend, but a friend nonetheless. Charlie is in his mid-fifties, but he's not like any adult Marcus has ever met. He loves pranks and he really loves football. And, after practicing with Charlie every afternoon, Marcus comes to love the `pop' of a hard tackle as much as the odd older man does.

When football tryouts start, Marcus is met with a wall of resistance. The team was undefeated last year, only graduated two seniors, and the coach has no desire to introduce a new player into the mix. Worse yet, starting quarterback Troy Popovich detests Marcus from the moment they meet and he doesn't try to hide it. When Marcus discovers that Charlie is Troy's dad - and a fourteen year veteran of the NFL - Troy's hostility and Charlie's juvenile behavior lead Marcus to discover a truth about Charlie that his family is desperate to hide.

Marcus vows to remain loyal to his friendship with Charlie, despite Troy's animosity. Even though Troy and his sister want Marcus to stay away from his father and out of their lives, he's not willing to abandon Charlie - even if it means putting his own future at risk.

Great book for preteens and teens. Emotional story with a bit of levity combined. Does address a serious issue for pro athletes.Good food for thought.

this book is great my 6th grade reading teacher gave it to me amd i could not put it down.

My grandson age 15 who is a sports person loved reading this book. at first he thought it was about a "Pop "(who he knows as his grandfather) After reading he couldnt stop.... Right age ,right subject.

It's summer vacation and Vespa-riding teenager Marcus Jordan is the new kid in town, having just moved with his mom from Kansas to Upstate New York. The previous fall, back in Olathe, Marcus had been the record-setting star quarterback on the JV squad. He's planning to try out for the varsity team at his new high school in Kennesaw, a team that completed a perfect 11-0 championship season last year. In preparation, Marcus has found a deserted park in town -- home to a modern art statue that looks like "a titanic paper airplane had fallen from the sky" -- where he has been practicing by himself with a ball and an empty picture frame suspended on a rope as a target.

"Sucking in a lungful of moist, heavy air, Marcus pumped once and unleashed the longest pass of the day, a loose spiral that nevertheless seemed to have a lot of power behind it. It sailed high over the apex of the Paper Airplane before beginning its downward trajectory toward the hoop.

"Suddenly, for the first time in four days, Marcus spied another human being in the park. The figure was just a blur across his field of vision. It leaped into the air, picked off the pass, and kept on going.

"The receiver made a wide U-turn and, grinning triumphantly, jogged up to Marcus.

"Marcus smiled too. 'Nice catch, bro--'

"He was looking at a middle-aged man, probably around fifty years old. He was tall and built like a redwood. But the guy ran like a gazelle and had caught the ball with sure hands, tucking it in tight as he ran. He had definitely played this game before."

So begins the story of Marcus Jordan and Charlie Popovich. Charlie, it turns out, is a beloved hometown hero, having returned to Kennesaw to raise a family after completing a long career as a linebacker in the National Football League. Charlie is a man with the heart of a kid.

"This Charlie character might be weird, but his enthusiasm had sucked Marcus in.

"The ball plunged down, and Marcus gathered it into his arms.

"Something hit him. The impact was so jarring, so unexpected, that there was barely time to register what was happening. It was Charlie -- he'd rammed a rock-hard shoulder into Marcus's sternum and dropped him where he stood. The ball squirted loose, but Marcus wasn't even aware of it. He lay like a stone on the grass, ears roaring, trying to keep from throwing up his breakfast.

"Gasping, he scrambled to his feet, squaring off against his companion. 'What was that for?'

"'I love the pop! Sometimes you actually hear it go pop!'"

Charlie is now paying a steep price for all those years of putting hits on opposing players. He often seems to believe that he is still the old mischief making high school football star he'd been in the early Seventies. Literall

Charlie's family is desperately trying to hide their knowledge of what is behind his peculiar behavior, and there is conflict with Charlie's own teens when they find out that Marcus has been hanging out in Three Alarm Park with their father.

I have often had good things to say about Gordon Korman's storytelling, but POP is really something else. It is pretty intense to have read the book within days of Natasha Richardson's untimely death from a brain injury suffered in a fall while skiing down a beginner slope. It has me recalling the current condition of my childhood hero Muhammad Ali. It makes me think of my younger brother whose life has been colored for the past twenty-five years by the long-term effects of a near-fatal skull fracture suffered in a crash when his friend fell asleep behind the wheel and wrapped the car around a tree. And I think about watching Steve Young suffer concussion after concussion during his reign as quarterback of our San Francisco 49ers, and wondering whether he'd someday suffer long-term effects from them.

I also think about the kids in our town who come flying down hilly roads on skateboards without helmets.

"The park wasn't as empty as it had been during the summer. There were a few young mothers pushing babies in strollers, and an elderly couple chatting on a bench in the shadow of the Paper Airplane. Remembrance -- what a name for the sculpture that marked his first meeting with a guy who couldn't remember at all.

"No, that wasn't quite right. Charlie did remember. He remembered what still made the most sense to him -- being young and wild and invincible, taking on the world with his best friend."

POP goes well beyond the story of Marcus and Charlie. There is also Marcus struggling to become a part of the David Nathan Aldrich High School football team and dealing with the hot shot quarterback who led last year's championship team; there is Marcus matching wits and locking lips with Alyssa Fontaine, the gorgeous head cheerleader who "designs zone blitzes in her sleep;" and there are the repeated references to Marcus's relationship with his own estranged father back in Kansas (a.k.a. Comrade Stalin)

But in the same way that teens will easily identify with Marcus Jordan and his struggles, I feel a deep emotional connection with Charlie, the good-hearted, at-risk, fifty-four year-old fellow Class of '73 graduate who -- in his mind -- is reliving his youthful glory and antics from all those years ago.