Game Changer

Hard hits are part of football, and football is part of Ash. His father was a great player in high school, and Ash hopes to surpass his dad and make him proud. During one aggressive play, Ash makes a particularly hard hit. Later, while driving home, he almost causes an accident by running a blue stop sign. Surreptitiously asking about the color change leads him to wonder if maybe stop signs have always been blue. When another hard hit at football changes his mascot, he starts to worry, but this is just the beginning of the changes that happen as his universe shifts, each one more alarming than the last.

Shusterman took America’s favorite sport, football, and used it as a vehicle for examining racism, sexism, prejudices of all kinds, to cause discomfort not only to Ash but to readers as well. It is not subtle as Ash’s world changes to include segregation and blatant sexism with each concussive hit on the football field. While it may play into the theme of the white male hero, it may be the message that some still need to hear as Ash comes to terms with his own unintentional ignorance.