Synopsis

In the final swimming season at Frost High School Coach Max II Song offers his small but talented team the gift of self-discipline in the form of Stotan Week--a grueling four-hour-a-day, nonstop test of physical and emotional stamina designed to bring them to the outer edge of their capabilities. The four young men accept the challenge-and something none of them could have predicted is set in motion.

Stotan! is a humorous, sometimes heartbreaking story about making sense of chaos, about falling in love when it's not in the cards, about friendship and commitment, about life and death.

Reviews

"Crutcher has written an involving, realistic novel; though it deals with tough, unsolvable issues it is often leavened with humor."
~ Publisher's Weekly

"A fine coming-of-age novel...Crutcher's novel more than moves and entertains; it teaches. It teaches young people about responsibility, about courage and heroism, and ultimately about life itself. Stotan! is very, very, good."
~ School Library Journal

"Crutcher is a sports translator, transforming sports into an idiom for life, making the spirit and power of sports understandable to enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts." 
~ Children's Literature

"Stotan! is similar in style and characterization to Crutcher's own Running Loose {BRD 1983}, depicting beautifully the joy, pain, and emotional strength of a male adolescent friendship... a lovely story and a model of the realistic adolescent novel...."
~ Voice of Youth Advocates

"Filled with humor and compassion." 
~ English Journal

Awards & Honors

ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults
School Library Journal Best of the Best
SLJ Starred Review
ALA Best Book for Young Adults
Nominee, 1989 Colorado Blue Spruce Award