Overweight and unathletic, 13-year-old Elvin Bishop dreads his three weeks at a summer camp designed to initiate incoming freshmen into the Christian Brothers Academy. The experience turns out to be even worse than Elvin imagined when he realizes the camp's supreme purpose is to channel each of the boys into an athletics slot and Elvin fails miserably at one sport after another. Much of Elvin's problem is attitude: he is not a team player nor does he have any intention of ever becoming one. But he manages (just barely) to endure his ordeal, describing every trial in great detail from his cynical, sarcastic, and ultimately entirely sane, point of view. Hilarious from start to finish, this brilliant social satire completely exposes the myth of modern masculinity. (Ages 13-16)

DIVElvin just wants to fit in—but how can he find his place when he doesn’t know what to look for?/divDIV/divDIVElvin Bishop is about to attend a three-week-long high school orientation camp, where each student is “slotted” or placed on an athletic team. Chubby, fourteen-year-old Elvin knows this is not the place for him. From the start, he’s told that some kids get picked on more than others, and to “try not to be one of those guys.” His friends encourage him to toughen up, to avoid being a geek by acting more confident. The trouble is, Elvin doesn’t quite know what kind of guy he is. And what if the kind of guy he is now isn’t the kind of guy he’ll be in four years?/divDIV /divDIVAt times laugh-out-loud funny, Slot Machine is a keenly felt story of the push and pull of wanting to belong./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Chris Lynch including rare images from the author’s personal collection./divDIV /div