The Contender

Description

Before you can be a champion,
you have to be a contender.

Alfred Brooks is scared. He s a highschool dropout and his grocery store job is leading nowhere. His best friend is sinking further and further into drug addiction. Some street kids are after him for something he didn t even do. So Alfred begins going to Donatelli s Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions. There he learns it s the effort, not the win, that makes the man -- that last desperate struggle to get back on your feet when you thought you were down for the count.

Alfred s life is going nowhere fast. He s a high-school dropout working at a grocery store. His best friend is drifting behind a haze of drugs and violence, and now some street punks are harassing him for something he didn t do. Feeling powerless and afraid, Alfred gathers up the courage to visit Donatelli s Gym, the neighborhood s boxing club. He wants to be a champion--on the streets and in his own life. Alfred doesn t quite understand when Mr. Donatelli tells him, "It s the climbing that makes the man. Getting to the top is an extra reward." In the end, he learns that a winner isn t necessarily the one standing when the fight is over. Teens and adults alike will be knocked out by this powerful story of how a frightened boy becomes a man.