Second Impact
Written by David Klass and Perri Klass. Report by Kyle Ott.
Carla has affected the football tradition of Kendall, while Jerry has led his team to the State Championship game.
Carla started to look into head injuries--in all sports--when the star wideout of the team and Jerry's best friend, Danny, gets hit hard in a critical game. Carla breaks privacy rules and sees Danny in the hospital after the game and thinks that he should not come back to play anytime soon. Kendall's coach, Coach Shea, sits Danny out in the Semifinal game just to be safe and Jerry played his best game ever to lead the Tigers to the Championship game.
Carla gets in trouble with the principal of the school for "trying to undermine the school and the team". Danny still shows signs that he might not be completely healthy. Jerry gets the flu right before the championship game. Will Carla return to Kendall High? Will Danny be okay to play? Can Jerry tough it out and win the championship?
A theme of this book is to worry about the health of friends and not to pressure athletes back into playing sports too soon after an injury. The genre is realistic fiction. Second Impact is told in first person point of view by either Jerry or Carla, depending on the moment in the story.
Additional Information
This book was written as blog entries by Jerry and Carla that helped tell the plot of the book. There were also e-mails written between Carla and Jerry. I liked this because it was different than usual books and changed narrators throughout the story, which gave more insight to how the two main characters--Jerry and Carla--felt.
I enjoyed the fact that it had a lot of action from the football season. I also found it interesting how I could relate to this book since I have had a head injury and it provided additional facts that I hadn't known. These were shown from discussions that Carla had with doctors.
I enjoyed the ending of the book as it showed Jerry's character and how a friend should act towards another. I do wish that some things ended differently than they did but overall it was a good ending.
Second Impact is a great football book for any football fans or players. I don't only recommend this book to boys--but also to girls. I think that girls could relate to Carla and may also enjoy the football aspect of the book. If you have not interest in learning about injuries or are not interested in sports (such as football), then you may not enjoy this book as much.