Fighting for Dontae

by Mike Castan

Javier's life is going nowhere fast. He hates seventh grade, his father's locked up, and his mother can't be relied on. He and his friends are in a gang; but he doesn't even know why he joined the Playaz in the first place, since hanging with them is like asking for trouble from the cops. When he is assigned to work with the special education class, Javier thinks that the one thing he had going for him in middle school--his social life--is over. Little by little, though, Javier realizes that he actually enjoys reading to Dontae, a severely disabled boy his age. When everything else around him is falling apart, working with Dontae becomes the one thing worth fighting for.

Genres: Young Adult, School, Friendship

144 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

Mike Castan is a writer who has been an actor and a middle-grade substitute teacher. He lives in California.

Reviews

[Kayleigh Mccormac · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this book I didn't know if I wanted to finish it. But I'm glad I did. It picked up pretty quickly. And the book has a good message. It illustrates empathy nicely. The thing that bugged me about it was that there was a not a lot of dialogue. It was a lot of narration from the main character. And the ending was very abrupt. But it was worth reading. I'm hoping a lot of my "tough boys" will be able to connect with it.

There is language, teen drug use, alcohol, and violence, so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. But I do think it would be a good pick for more mature students, maybe those who you feel may be at-risk.

[Sindi]

So far the book Fighting For Dontae is very interesting. The main character is changing for the better throughout the book. However, he meets many difficulties through his journey. One of them is his mom and her drug addiction. Another one is him being a part of a gang and how that influence reflects on him at school, life and in general. His change started showing up whenever he started school and he joined the special ed class to help out. That's when he met this kid Dontae and as he helps him he starts having more sympathy and being more humbled. I recommend it because it teaches a good lesson and it has an important message for people in the main character's situation.

[Emily D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Javier, the protagonist who lives in a poor environment but who has a good heart and is able to keep himself out of bad trouble even though his friends get caught up in the Latino gang lifestyle and partying. It was cool that Javier was able to help the special ed class and that it gave him purpose in life. It was cool too that he got paired up with Jessica for a project and grew close with her. It felt like these moments were so separate from the rest of his life and I wasn’t sure all those parts of his life flowed together convincingly, but I guess it’s a YA book with a good story and maybe more simplified than an adult novel would be.

[MaryAnne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Against the struggle of his home life, Javier finds joy working as a student aide in a special education classroom.

[Jaden p · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very well written. Like when Javier talks about the seventh grade I could really relate to that. This book really makes you feel like your not the only person going through what your going through like trying to be popular or how hard school is to you but teachers keep telling you to study and it doesn't work. Like on page 57 Javier says "I just don't get school" I felt like this is the only book I actually relate to.


Another thing, the more I read this book I felt like the author really took time in making these characters. Javier tells about his life, what he likes, and who he hangs around. These diesions make him who he is and I really like that. This book also has many surprising twist. Like when Javier helps Dontae get a book on 20 but later in the book he is his mentor and reading that book to him.

[Clementine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Javier’s life is already set out for him, and he’s just entering middle school. He lives with his mom, who struggles with money and drugs. Sometimes his father’s around, when he’s between jail trips. Dontae and his friends are supposed to be in a gang and are constantly being asked to prove their own toughness. Javier struggles with all of this plus the fact that he likes to read and doesn’t actually want to court trouble, let alone be in it. When his school assigns him a service project working with the kids in special education, he knows he’ll never hear the end of it. What he doesn’t expect is to end up loving it–especially when he gets to read to a severely disabled Dante.

Mike Castan’s story about a young boy fighting against the inevitability of his own future is tailor-made for reluctant readers, but it also has broader appeal because it doesn’t pander to its audience. Although Castan’s prose is simple and there’s not a lot of time given to detailing the characters who inhabit Javier’s world, the story works quite well.

There’s also the fact that this will likely resonate with many of the readers in the intended audience. Javier’s father actually sums up the underlying problem Javier faces: “I mean, it’s easy to say you want to do something, but can you see the path? Shoot, man. I wanted to do a lot of things, but I had no idea how to even start.” Javier’s own interior conflict: fitting in with his peers or fighting for a chance to break free of his (doomed) future is mirrored in his father’s struggles to stay out of prison. Castan’s novel doesn’t try to sugarcoat the fact that Javier’s world doesn’t have a lot of good options for him.

Which is why reading with Dante is such a nice contrast to the darkness of Javier’s world. As he and Dante form a bond through reading, Javier starts to feel what it would like to be successful. This positivity should impact readers as well.

A moving story that should work especially well for tween and teen boys. Recommended.

Fighting for Dante by Mike Castan. Holiday House: 2012. Library copy. Read for Cybils 2012 Round 1 Panel.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story depicts the struggles of a young man and his friends in the inner city. Javier is in seventh grade and joins a gang because the gang says so - they jump him and after being badly beaten in the initation he is in, no choice in the matter. But he does chose to stay as out of things as possible. Students will understand his struggle to be himself, when the friends he has grown up with turn to drug use and violence. His father is in and out of jail, more in than out. When he comes home things are great, but eventually he breaks a law and ends up back inside.

Javier has one thing going for him. A teacher that he learns to like and respect takes an interest in him. When he is forced to do a service project, that teacher recruits him as an aide to the special ed class she teaches. At first concerned that his friends will call him just another "retard", he learns to care for the kids he cares for, and have pride when he can help them. And when that teacher lets him know she beleives in him, his natural intelligence and empathy come to the fore. Dontae and the other kids need him, and that need serves as a counter pull to the call of the gang, the increasing violent confrontations his friends are involved in, and the drugs that surround him.

At times the story gets a little preachy. But it shows the difference a caring adult can make if he/she says just the right word at the right time in a young person's life.

Yes, there is cursing, there is a gang, and these are real kids, not saits. And yes, there is drug use, one of many temptations Javier and other real kids have to confront and learn to avoid. Watching Javier say no may help other kids learn to do the same thing. And watching Javier help Dontae and the other kids int he class serves as an example of the power that caring for someone else can have for the giver.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seventh grader Javier is heading downhill fast. He and his friends are drawn into the fringes of the gangsta life simply because there's nothing much to do and there's no money to much of anything. School has always been boring, for the most part, and when he is assigned to work with the youngsters in a special education class, he is less than thrilled since he knows that his peers will ridicule him. But for some reason, he connects with a boy named Dontae, who loves having Javier read a book by Ernest Hemingway to him, as well as to some of the other children in the class. While Mrs. Aronson, the teacher of the class, is savvy enough to see through some of Javier's defensive behavior and knows that he has light fingers, she also sees potential in him and is pleased that he is good with her students. As things improve at home and at school for Javier--he finds a romantic connection with Jessica--Javier watches as several of his other friends get in trouble. Readers who are disinterested in school and many of the books teachers offer them are likely to find much truth in Javier's story, and while it isn't sure that he has a bright future, he has a much brighter one now that he has some sense of purpose. I liked how Javier was an avid reader who would give any book suggested by his teacher a try. Like many of us, he seems to have found that reading often offers an escape from the world around us.

[Lavabearian (Jessica) · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I still think that the cover does not do anything for this book. It looks like a pedophile intimidating their prey. The voice in the this book was also really unrealistic. I have a hard time believing that a 12-year-old boy can have mature thoughts like Javier and be so self-aware in middle school about shoes, classes, perceptions, and even predicting how things are going to go in social situations. He seems more like a 15 year-old. Also, I think that even if this was a realistic story and believable, I have a hard time accepting that this 12-year-old vulnerable boy would have so much self-control when his peers are constantly smoking pot, skipping school, stealing and participating in other gang related activities. My honest opinion is that this book was created after and episode of The Wire, an HBO series. I hold to my initial reaction to this book, a NO for the list.

[Kayta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fighting for Dontae centers around Javier, a young man living in a rundown town in California, where it's expect, and enforced, that he joins the gang that runs his block. His father is in and out of prison most of the time and his mother struggles with drug addiction while Javier tries to decide what kind of life he wants to live. At first he figures that this is it, that there is no getting out of the gang life. On the second day of seventh grade he is assigned to work as a Special Ed. Aide. At first he is mortified, knowing that the other kids will make fun of him. Then he starts working with Dontae, who seems not to care for anyone, that is until he meets Javier. Soon Javier sees a light, a way out of this life he thought would be it for him.

This story is inspiring, real, and beautiful.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for middle school libraries. It has a positive message and one students need.

However, I'm not sure that the students who are living this life will find Javier realistic. His father is in and out of jail and his mother is on and off of drugs and he belongs to a gang and yet he still manages to get to school every day and stay out of trouble. It is possible. But...

Students working with special education students can be a very positive thing and in Javier's case, a real motivator. Javier discovers that he actually likes helping the students and is drawn to the caring teacher and environment. I loved this aspect. Bottom line, caring environments and caring people promote positive, safe school environments for all.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been recommending this book for years to my students without having read it myself. My students said it as good and I took their word.

I finally read it and my students were right.

The main character reminds me of Ponyboy from The Outsiders. He's in a gang yet he's also a dreamy reader. There are also absentee parents: Ponyboy's an orphan while these parents are in jail and too busy to deal with their son.

There's all sorts of stuff parents would disapprove of: drugs, cursing, alcoholism, gang activity. Yet it's all realistic and necessary to the story.

I'm going to continue to recommend this book but it's going on my "mature" shelf. I think my students need it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. I picked it up as a possibility for Cafe Book and while I'm not sure it is a Cafe Book, Book.. it is one I think that many teenagers should read. I loved the growth of Javier throughout the story as he works more and more with the special needs class at work. I also enjoyed seeing him struggle with the gang related issues and him deciding he didn't want to be like that. I thought it was really sweet how attached Javier became to Dontae. I really really enjoyed this book & it is not my "typical" read.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's been almost a year since I read this (wow, time flies!). It's probably great for reluctant readers, but I really didn't get how the book could be called Fighting for Dontae. The particular friendship between Javier and Dontae is not the main plot in my opinion; it's more that Javier finds something productive to make his life a little better, which happens to be reading to Dontae. There is an apparent disconnect between the title and what happens in the story, so I didn't recommend it to a teacher friend who teaches seventh grade.

[Ann Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick and easy read...recommend for the fourth and fifth grade summer reading list...maybe a sixth grade...Javiers life is not the best but it is still better than Dontaes...fate connects the two and so the story is written...the story is one of tolerance - which everyone needs to learn...the title would lead one to believe it is a physically violent book but there really is no fight for Dontae...the story is more about Javier and his ability to cope with everything

[Dodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of remorse and redemption, and a solid choice for reluctant middle grade readers from urban environments. They will recognize the temptation from the 'easy' gang side and the hope of the college bound, or at least hopeful, kids from the lower classes. I was rooting for Dontae all the way.

[Great Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seventh-grader Javier is hanging with the Playaz, a street gang. He gets assigned to help with the special ed class at school where he meets Dontae, a severly disabled boy his own age. Could this be Javier's chance to change?
Reviewer 20

[Anne Harlan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was engaged by this book, but ended up feeling disappointed. Too many little details are unrealistic. Maybe if it had a different title I would like it better. Javier never fights for Dontae either physically or metaphorically. The book is not about Dontae; his name shouldn't be in the title.

[Cheryl Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book, especially for my at risk kids. Some mature content, but the story is amazing! I gave 3 stars only because I didn't really like the abrupt ending. I love Javier's character and his heart!