Ten Seconds To Play!

Chip Hilton #12

by Clair Bee, Chuck Wielgus, Dean Edwards Smith (Foreword)

Chip takes a job at a summer camp and meets a talented athlete who may be joining him on the football team at State University, and whose arrogance hides a secret problem

Genres: Sports, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Rebekah Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t have as much patience and forbearance as Chip does. I was frustrated as Chip was but when he was ready to offer a helping hand, I was still annoyed. And I must say that Frank Dodd was a great guy in many ways, but he sure was blind when it came to a certain someone. I can’t say I agree with the men on his staff. Yeah, someone needs help, but Frank was only making things worse. But things got turned around and straightened up with the help of Chip and his friends even when they didn’t know what was going on.

[Scott Manze · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned about this series while on a visit to the wonderful bookstore “Books on Bay” in Savannah. It would have been perfect for me in my adolescence, combining the sports-based stories with a life-lesson not-so-subtlety woven in like the more contemporary Matt Christopher novels I enjoyed in my youth, with an era-specific style akin to the Hardy Boys series I loved.

The 1950s jargon and the descriptions of football played in a style that would be completely unrecognizable to fans of the game today is the only drawback, as it actually made the book a bit of a challenge at times to understand all of the nuance. Overall, a fun read with a nice message.

A hat tip to my wife for finding a copy of this one at a local antique store. It was a little odd reading this story, since the main characters uncharacteristically age throughout the series, and I missed out on some of the groundwork of character development jumping into the 12th book of the series. This didn’t impact my ability to understand or enjoy the book, however.

[James Hogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another fun Chip Hilton book! Thankfully I read the other college football Hilton book first so I wasn't totally confused going into this one. Here he's going into his sophomore year but first...he's helping run a summer camp! Kind of a weird book in that sense, with half the book being at this summer camp and the rest being the beginning of the football season at State. Also interesting to see the author's approach to psychological trauma. I'm kind of doubting the author is the right person to be getting this kind of advice from and the solution he presented was...a bit too pat. Still, I enjoyed this book!

[Steve Rutherford]

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