Book Talk #2 on High Heat

High Heat is a Young Adult novel by Carl Deuker published in 2003. The story opens with the first baseball game of the season for Shane Hunter’s high school team. Shane is the closer for his high-school team, which is the pitcher that is brought in at the end of the game to hold a lead for his team. Therefore, Shane attends a private school in Seattle. But one day at his game his parents were on the bleachers at Shane’s game the police come and arrest Shane’s father in front of everyone. From there the game ends and Shane’s coach, Mr. Levine, gives Shane a ride home to the exclusive gated community where his family lives. When they arrive to Shane’s house, they find police there with his mother, going through files and taking evidence away. Shane talks with his younger sister Marian, who is very upset and tries to figure out what happened to his father. When the police leave their mother takes them out to dinner and then has a long conversation with their lawyer. She explains that Shane’s Dad has been arrested for money laundering and may have been involved with drug dealers who needed to launder their money through a local business. However, Shane’s father gets released on bail and the story returns with Shane going back to school, but everyone begins to start talking about him, which leads to him getting into a fight with some teammates at his baseball practice. Yet, Coach Levine breaks up the fight and doesn’t punish Shane because of his current family situation. From there Shane tells his coach that his attitude will change, but as the story goes on, we see that Shane’s father begins to drink heavily, as he knows he’s going to be locked up. This begins to affect Shane’s pitching as he blows his next two saves from his father’s distractions and his teammates being typical high-school students that love gossip and making fun of people. Henceforth, the day that Shane gets a save and helps his team win the game, he realizes that it was the day when Shane’s father had to skip the game to meet with the police. Soon after realizing this it because really depressing for him as he wants his family’s support, but he wants to help his team win baseball games and he wants to pitch well too. Yet, another tragic event happens with Shane, as Shane gets a ride home from Coach Levine, they discover that Shane’s father has committed suicide by shooting himself. Shane learns that the family doesn’t have as much money as he thought, and his mother is forced to sell their large house and must pull both Marian and Shane out of private school. They move into a small, run-down apartment in a bad area of town and enroll in public school. There Shane begins to drink and smoke, and one day with a gang of bad kids he gets caught stealing. This is when he must do community service ordered by the judge to help fix up public baseball fields. However, one day the manager of one of the teams sees that Shane has a true love for the game and convinces him to start playing again for his team as the closer. Yet, Shane’s probation officer suggested that he do therapy instead, but Shane convinces him and his mother that it’s not necessary because he’s going to play baseball again. Shane believes that baseball will help him cope and become a better person by interacting with his new teammates and making new friends. This is when Shane finds his love for baseball again, but still deals with his anger issues and finds relief only when he is pitching. This changes when Shane sees a new family move into his old house. And soon realizes that their son, Reese, had begin to hangout with Shane’s old friends and got his spot on his old high-school baseball team. During, one of their games he finds himself pitching against his old team and the first batter he faces is the new kid Reese. There Shane gets very angry and decides to throw a fastball close to his head to brush him off the plate, but instead he ends up hitting Reese in the head and breaking his helmet and injuring him very badly. This affects Shane emotionally as he feels guilty for ruining Reese’s chance at playing baseball every again. Reese slowly recovers, but he’s not the same hitter that he was before. That when Shane decides to leave the team and stop pitching altogether. This is when he begins to visit with Reese and spend time with him, getting to know him and working through his guilt. He soon discovers that like him Reese’s life wasn’t perfect either. At first, they are angry to meet each other, but begin to practice together which Shane wants to help Reese get over his fear of hitting again. But its Reese who helps Shane out in the end as he convinces him to play baseball again and continue to be the dominate closer that he was. There Shane is able to release his guilt and anger and rediscovers his love for the game of baseball. Shane begins to start pitching well again and gets scouted to play baseball at the University of Portland.

Rationale: The reason why I choose this book for my book talk is that it’s a great story that has a lot of moral life lessons behind the text. Not only does it give great examples of situations that may be tough and difficult to handle at times, but the perseverance of the main character as he truly never gave up the love for the game, and somehow always came back and found his love and started dominating again. However, the text would best be appropriate for high-school from 9^th grade and up, or if a well matured 8^th grader wanted to read it.

Challenges: I believe that there wouldn’t be a lot of challenges behind presenting this text for my students to read, but I do believe some parents wouldn’t be too thrilled with their child reading about drinking and smoking and stealing during Shane’s dark days.

Teaching Ideas: Some teaching ideas that I would have my students discuss or write about would be the “Character and Values,” of each character and the meaning behind them; Also I would have my students discuss the “Culture and Diversity,” from the book and how it relates to our city or community as well; Lastly, I would have my students talk about the importance of “Friends and Friendship,” as some students understand the difficulty of not fitting in or having that many friends during high-school.