Dunk

by Lubar, David

• ISBN13: 9780618194551
• ISBN10: 061819455X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-23
• Publisher: Clarion Books

Summary

To the Bozo, the clown who sits inside the cage above the dunk tank, everyone is a "mark." Once he has zeroed in on his victim, the Bozo comes up with the perfect wisecracksomething funny enough to make people stop and listen, and cruel enough to hook the mark. Now the mark is bent on revenge, and he'll buy however many balls he needs to hit the target and see the Bozo plunge into the water. It's a game that fascinates Chad, who lives on the Jersey shore, where the boardwalk turns into an amusement park every summer. He wishes he could shout at the world from the safety of a cagehis dad ran out on him and his mom, and now everyone seems convinced that Chad will wind up a loser, too. He's determined to get a job playing the Bozo, something he knows he'd be good at. Suddenly, Chad finds himself thrown into a strange and twisted world, where humor has far more power than he ever imagined. With a crackling plot and smart, funny dialogue, Dunk pulls readers along on a journey that exposes a universal truth: We all need to laugh.

Author Biography

David Lubar grew up in New Jersey and now lives next door in Pennsylvania. Armed with a degree in philosophy from Rutgers University and no marketable job skills, he spent several years as a starving writer before accidentally discovering that he knew how to program computers. He is now a full-time writer and the author of eleven books for teens and young readers, including DUNK (Clarion Books), FLIP (Tor), and WIZARDS OF THE GAME(Philomel). David Lubar lives with his wife; they have one highly intelligent daughter and three idiosyncratic cats.

Excerpts

Chapter 1 His voice ripped the air like a chain saw. The harsh cry sliced straight through my guts the first time I heard it. The sound cut deep, but the words cut deeper. He shredded any fool who wandered near the cage. He drove people wild. He drove them crazy. Best of all, he drove them to blow wads of cash for a chance to plunge his sorry butt into a tank of slimy water.
This was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Which made it that much more amazing, since I lived in one of the coolest places on the planet and I’d seen some of the freakiest things man or nature had ever created.
I was on my way down the boardwalk to get a slice of pizza at Salvatore’s. Today was the start of the tourist season. The crowds were thin because the ocean water was still chilly. That wouldn’t last. In a few weeks the place would be mobbed. It would stay that way until the end of summer— wall-to-wall tourists frantically packing as much activity as possible into their vacation at the Jersey shore. I hoped someone special would also return. But if I thought about her too much right now, I knew I’d go crazy.