Centerville

by Jeff Rud

Basketball-crazy Jake Burnett is thrilled to be leaving home to attend prestigious Centerville Prep. It’s an opportunity to pursue his hoop dreams at the highest level. But things aren’t quite as advertised at his new school, and Jake soon finds himself struggling both on and off the court. At first, Jake is determined to play harder and ignore the warning signs. Until he discovers that his new head coach is a scam artist, putting kids at risk for his own gain. Now Jake has a difficult choice to make—advance his basketball career or do the right thing.

Genres: Sports

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Jeff Rud has authored eight books, including three young adult fiction titles for Orca in the South Side Sports series. A sportswriter, columnist, and sports editor for newspapers in Western Canada over a 20-year period, he is now a reporter for the Victoria Times Colonist, covering provincial politics in the British Columbia legislature.

His non-fiction works include Canucks Legends: Vancouver's Hockey Heroes (Raincoast, 2006) and Steve Nash: The Making of an MVP (Penguin, 2007.) Born in Red Deer, Alberta, Jeff now lives in Victoria, B.C., with his wife, Lana, a middle school teacher, and their two children.

Reviews

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library Copy

Jake is a good basketball player, but not getting the attention he needs for college scholarships in his small town. When a scout from the prestigious Centerville Prep recruits him, his parents are glad to pay the $11,000 tuition to have him go to a private school, live in nice dorms, and have a better chance at being recruited. He flies to the town where the school is, but no one is there to meet him. He has to take a bus, and the coach meets him and drops him off at a decrepit house where some of his new teammates seem to be living. There isn't much food, but the coach drops off cheap, carb heavy groceries the next morning. Jake isn't too thrilled with the classes, either, but the boys are allowed to end their day early so they can practice basketball. Some of the boys have been with Coach Stone for a while, and acknowledge that he lied about the facilities. Instead of having a dedicated campus, the coach makes deals with local schools to "host" his basketball program. Since he's a senior and needs a certain number of credits to graduate, Jake hunts down a guidance counselor and adds two classes, but the coach isn't happy that they run into practice. The basketball is great, but the players often make the coach angry, and he retaliates by cutting their playing time. Another player, Billy, is short a couple of credits and isn't going to graduate, and his parents paid even more tuition. When he takes some desperate action, Jake knows he needs to talk to the board of education representative he met on the plane, who has been e mailing him about Centerville Prep. Will Jake be able to still make his basketball dreams come true?
Strengths: This was just weirdly fun, and I think will be very appealing to my reluctant 8th grade readers. The dreams of making it big in basketball, living unsupervised in a house with other players, and a lot of descriptions of what happens on the court all merge into an intriguing tale. There's even some quickly resolved trauma with Billy. This is a short book, but brilliantly sneaky-- it's 161pages, but only 4 Accelerated Reader points (Wimpy Kid books are 3), because the Orca sports books are 7"x 4 and 1/4". I also enjoyed Rud's Paralyzed and In the Paint.
Weaknesses: This might seem impossible that a sports school would get away with charging high tuition and mistreating players, but there was an incident in Columbus not too long ago where there was a very similiar school! I never followed up with what happened to Bishop Sycamore, but it certainly made the news! (And even the name reeked of something made up.)
What I really think: Glad I purchased them. These would be great for classroom libraries, because they are available in paperback. I splurge and get the prebinds.

[Hamza · Rating 5 out of 5]

The red dot book I have chose to read is called "Centerville". The author of the book is "Jeff Rud".  I chose to read this book because its about basketball, and thats my favorite sport. This book is about this kid named "Jake Burnett". Jake is a basketball enthusiast and loves the sport. He is currently going to a high school about a thousand miles away from Centerville. He is a very good point guard and was playing his junior year at his hometown, when one day a coach came to recruit him from Centerville, wanting him to play at a prep school. He is very excited to go play on this prep school team so he can make it big. But when he gets there he doesn't seem to happy with what this school looked like in the brochure. This school isn't even a prep-school ad he realizes the coach is a scammer. Jake is taking a risk of spending money for this high school basketball team and is traveling very far away from home.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Centerville is about a high school senior named Jake. Jake leaves his home school in Midland to go to a big prep school in Centerville in hope of receiving attention from college scouts. He is very excited about going to Centerville, as it is his dream school, but he soon finds out that Centerville might not be the dream school he was hoping for.
He thought he would be in luxury dorms, but he ended up in a run-down, crowded house. He thought he would be eating high class food, but there ends up not even being enough food to feed him and his teammates. He also attends a regular public high school, not a fancy prep academy. He can’t even tell his parents because they paid $20,000 for him to be there. Jake is then faced with a tough decision to potentially rat out his couch and shut down the program, or stay with his team.

[Tyler Miranda]

Tyler Miranda
12/16/10
English 2
Period: B



The reason that I like this book because of the themes, which are courage and hard work. The reason that the theme is hard work and courage because Jake's parents kind of doubted his basketball dreams, but he just pushed forward and follow his dreams. Also, Jake Burnett's new basketball coach made Jake and his teammates do man-makers, which are like suicides. Even though man-makers are hard to do, Jake just pushed through it and got those man-makers done. Also, Jake was part of some kind of incident at his new school, it took a while, but he decided to tell the authorities at his new school about what he did.

[Sayfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was fine. I just finished reading it. I was kind of expecting more out of it. The story was a little pointless. I can see how it would be better if you are reading it in school as a class but maybe not quite as individuals. Although this book is about 150 pages, the print is bigger than I was used to and for sure bigger that the average book, therefore, it took me only 2 days to read.

[Shalev Zana]

Its a good book i want to read

[Talal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Jake F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

You got an invitation to attend this fancy school to pursue your hoop dream and you have to travel to a different state to attend this school. When you get to the school, it isn’t what you thought it was going to be. This is what happens to Jake Burnett in the book Centerville by Jeff Rud

This book is about a basketball player named Jake Burnett who is invited to finish his senior year at Centerville Prep. When he got to the school, it didn’t look like the brochure he got. Some examples of this are that the school wasn’t even named Centerville Prep, there was not a dorm, there was no food and he couldn’t take any of the classes that he wanted because his basketball practice started very early. The plot of this book gets really good when he notices what really is going on at the school and he is going to make a decision on if he will advance his basketball career or do the right thing. This book is sports fiction because it is talking about sports and there are fictional characters.

My internal conflict for this book is the character versus himself. Jake is going through a lot since he heard about all of the false things about the school, the brochure, the coach and how far away he is from home. He doesn’t know if he will go home or stay here and get a basketball scholarship. My external conflict is the character versus his coach. In the book, the coach at the start is nice but at practices and games he is putting Jake on the bench, even when they scrimmage a bad team. He is better than the starting point guard, but since that player has been with that coach for a long time he plays him first. The coach only has an eight man rotation, and he mostly keeps his starters in for the majority of the game, which means that Jake doesn’t get to play. He didn’t play a single minute in the first two games, but is starting to play some more.

I thought this book was great because in each chapter there was some sort action. It also describes the characters very well at the start. I didn’t like that there was such a short amount of pages. I recommend this book to people who like sports, especially basketball as that was the focus of the book.

[Sherrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This new entry in the Orca Sports series focuses on a crooked basketball academy that rips off the families of young athletes for serious cash and puts the teens at risk. It is a hi lo book, meaning it is high interest, low lexile. The story moves very quickly, I read the whole book in about 90 minutes. It is compelling, the reader is interested to find out if the sleazy coach will get away with his scheme. One note is that the series is designed for reluctant or struggling readers, and at times the word choices are a bit awkward for that group of readers. For example, on one page a boy tells friends that he "had a spare" (like a day off school?) and a hospital floor is referred to as "a general ward". In the least reluctant reader friendly sentence ever, the main character notes: "we shook hands and exchanged hugs in the schoolyard as we said our goodbyes." I'm not sure if it's a cultural difference (the author is Canadian) or if the author is older (his bio notes that he has been a journalist for 28 years), but this reader found those word choices notable in a book designed for reluctant readers. However, I did enjoy this book overall and I will be adding it to my library serving 5th to 9th grade struggling readers.

[Donna Burtwistle-Popplewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast-paced and engaging "rapid read" for reluctant readers....