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Coles Michael and the Whiz Kids: A Story of Basketball, Race, Suburbia 1960s at Bayshore Shopping Centre in Ottawa, ON
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Imagine a boy, five feet tall and one hundred pounds, who wants to play high school basketball. Now imagine that he was blind until the age of six and that he’s the first black student to attend his suburban school. And there you have Michael Thompson in 1965 in San Bruno, California. He played at the school where a young English teacher was coaching “lightweight basketball,” a competition for smaller players that has since disappeared. The team that Coach John Christgau put together came to be called the Whiz Kids for the way they rocketed up and down the court, led by Michael and invariably winning.
Michael and the Whiz Kids tells the story of the team’s 1968 championship season. It is a tale of cliffhanger games and players as outsized in character as they are short in stature, from the wild-haired, bespectacled “Professor” to the well-traveled Latvian dubbed “Suitcase” to the quiet and tenacious “Salt,” as in “of the earth.” But it is also a tale of the time—of counterculture, suburbia, integration, and racial brawls erupting on the court. In Christgau’s deft telling, it is an absorbing, often comic story of coming of age, for coach and Whiz Kids alike.
Imagine a boy, five feet tall and one hundred pounds, who wants to play high school basketball. Now imagine that he was blind until the age of six and that he’s the first black student to attend his suburban school. And there you have Michael Thompson in 1965 in San Bruno, California. He played at the school where a young English teacher was coaching “lightweight basketball,” a competition for smaller players that has since disappeared. The team that Coach John Christgau put together came to be called the Whiz Kids for the way they rocketed up and down the court, led by Michael and invariably winning.
Michael and the Whiz Kids tells the story of the team’s 1968 championship season. It is a tale of cliffhanger games and players as outsized in character as they are short in stature, from the wild-haired, bespectacled “Professor” to the well-traveled Latvian dubbed “Suitcase” to the quiet and tenacious “Salt,” as in “of the earth.” But it is also a tale of the time—of counterculture, suburbia, integration, and racial brawls erupting on the court. In Christgau’s deft telling, it is an absorbing, often comic story of coming of age, for coach and Whiz Kids alike.
Coles is renowned for its outstanding customer service and great selection of books. Along with the vast array of magazines, stationary, audio-books, children's literature, fiction, non-fiction and reference books, you can find accessories to make your reading experience more pleasurable. We can recommend the very best in reading today. We will help you search our titles for exactly what you need, and if we do not have it in stock, we will order it for you.
