
This is a book written in verse, best for mature readers.
Publishers Weekly said in a starred review, "Readers may find their own feelings swaying in beat with the heroine’s shifting moods as she approaches her coming-of-age and a state of self-acceptance."
Kirkus said, "The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality."
About Jerry Spinelli's 'Crash', School Library Journal says,
"A winning story about seventh-grade Crash Coogan's transformation from smug jock to empathetic, mature young man. In a clever, breezy first-person style, Spinelli tackles gender roles, family relationships, and friendship with humor and feeling.
As the novel opens, Crash feels passionately about many things: the violence of football; being in charge; the way he looks in shoulder pads; never being second in anything; and the most expensive sneakers at the mall. Although a stereotypical bully, the boy becomes more than one-dimensional in the context of his overworked, unavailable parents and the love he has for his grandfather, who comes to live with the Coogans and then suffers a stroke. It is because of his affection for Scooter that Crash comes to appreciate Penn Webb, a neighbor and classmate whom for years Crash has tormented and teased about his pacifism, vegetarianism, second-hand clothes, and social activism...
Readers will devour this humorous glimpse at what jocks are made of while learning that life does not require crashing helmet-headed through it."
