Just Don't Fall (Adapted for Young Readers): A Hilariously True Story of Childhood Cancer and Olympic Greatness - Hardcover

Sundquist, Josh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593621999 ISBN 13: 9780593621998

Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Adapted for young readers from his adult memoir, Just Don't Fall is the the hilarious true story about Josh Sundquist's battle with childhood cancer and how he worked his way to making the United States paralympic ski team.

The inspiration for the Apple TV show Best Foot Forward!

When he was ten years old Josh Sundquist had his leg amputated to treat bone cancer. But this is not a sad story; on the contrary, this memoir is a story of resilience, heart, and most importantly: humor.

Young Josh had a lot of adapting to do after he lost his leg. He had to learn how to walk again. He had to accept that he wouldn't be able to try out for the travel soccer team. He knew his life would never be the same again. But when he sees a poster in the hospital elevator advertising skiing classes, he realized all might not be lost.

Equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious, Just Don't Fall is Josh's story of surviving cancer with 50/50 odds, learning to be a professional skiier, and making his way to being a bestselling writer and motivational speaker. Inspirational and moving, Josh's story is one that can be appreciated by readers of all ages.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Josh Sundquist is a Paralympian, comedian, and internet creator. He's the author of the national bestselling Just Don't Fall, the novel Love and First Sight, the YA memoir We Should Hang Out Sometime, and Semi-Famous. His memoirs are in development for film and television by major studios and streaming services. Josh travels the globe as a motivational speaker for conferences and conventions. Josh is best known to his millions of internet followers for his Halloween costumes. He and his wife Ashley live in California, near the beach. He invites you to visit him at joshsundquist.com or follow him at @JoshSundquist.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I have always been fast. I have never met any kid who is faster than me in a race if we race from my mailbox to their mailbox. That’s why I’m good at soccer. But even though I’ve been practicing soccer with the other homeschool kids since I was six—three whole years now—there are no other homeschool teams to play against, so I’ve never played in a real game.
Then one Sunday morning I walk into Sunday school class and see Aaron, a homeschool friend who goes to my church, wearing green shorts, a matching jersey, and knee-high socks. I have on my white collared shirt and scratchy dress pants.
“I can’t believe your parents let you wear that to church!” I say.
“Well, my travel soccer team has a game right after Sunday school,” Aaron says. “And I won’t have time to change clothes before it starts.”
A travel soccer team! They play games . . . against other teams! They wear uniforms . . . to church! And homeschoolers are allowed to play!
As soon as Sunday school finishes, I run down all three flights of stairs to the hall outside adult Sunday school. I wait while the adults have a final prayer that lasts almost three hours, and then I jump in front of Mom as she walks out the door.
“Mommy!” I say. “Can I please, please, please play on a travel soccer team?”
She gives her standard response: “We’ll have to think about it”—which really means “We’ll have to think about reasons you can’t do it,” which really means “No.”
But I want that uniform. I want those shiny shorts and bright socks to wear in games against other soccer teams in other cities around Virginia. I want it more than anything I have ever wanted. So I keep asking Mom.
This is one of the advantages of homeschooling. You are with your mom all day, every day, so if there’s something you want, you can ask her over and over again. Of course, you don’t want to ask her so much that she gets annoyed—just enough so she doesn’t forget. That’s why I only ask every fifteen minutes. I did this the time Luke took his first steps and Mom said that he had figured out how to walk because he’d seen us walking all the time. So I asked Mom, “If we all flew around in jet packs all the time, would Luke figure out how to fly?” She said no, he wouldn’t, but I thought it would be really, really cool if Luke could learn how to fly, so I kept asking every fifteen minutes for several weeks, hoping she would say yes. But she never did.
The soccer-team question turns out differently than the jet-pack question, though. I ask Mom about the soccer team all week, and after just five days of asking every fifteen minutes—“No,” “We’ll think about it,” “Maybe”—Mom agrees—“but you can’t wear your uniform to church”—to let me play. Awesome! But tryouts aren’t for a few weeks, so I will use those weeks to practice and get good. I will start tomorrow, on Saturday.
•••
It’s Saturday morning, and I just woke up. I look at my alarm clock: 7:03. I do a quick calculation: an hour and fifty-seven minutes left. Less than two hours. I feel something warm under my foot. I pull back the covers and see Mom’s heating pad, the piece of fabric that heats up when you plug it into the wall. I’ve been using it for almost four months. I like to put it on my leg to help the growing pains when I am trying to go to sleep. I must have rolled around and pushed it down to my foot while I was asleep. I switch it off and climb down the ladder. Matthew, sleeping in the bottom bunk—he gets the bottom because he is seven and I am nine—feels the bed move and wakes up.
“Is it Saturday?” he whispers, like there are other people in the room who might wake up if he talks too loud.
“Yeah,” I whisper back.
“Yessss!” he says, scrunching his eyes together and smiling so I can see the gap where his adult teeth haven’t poked through yet. “Sweet cereal!” (Thweetthereal.)
Matthew jumps out of bed, but I am already halfway down the hall to the kitchen. I beat him there because I have always been fast, and when I stop running, I slide several inches on my socks across the kitchen floor. I see it on the table: Honey O’s, which you will love if you like Honey Nut Cheerios, trademark General Mills. It contains nine essential vitamins and is a good source of—
But while I am still reading the box, Matthew grabs it off the table. He lifts it with two hands and shakes it over his bowl. A couple of Honey O’s land in the bottom.Plink, plink. He shakes the box a few more times, and the cereal comes out like an avalanche into his bowl and pieces are rolling off the table and onto the floor.
“Awwwwwwwwww !” I say, which is what you say when you see someone break a rule and they are going to be in trouble. The “awwww” starts out in a low voice and then you get higher and higher until you are saying the “wwwwww ” part.
“Oops,” Matthew says.
“That’s more than a half bowl of sweet cereal!” I say. “I’m gonna tell Mom.”
“No, please”—pleath—“don’t tell Mom,” he says. “Watch.”
He grabs a fistful of Honey O’s from the table and returns them to the box. Twelve more fistfuls, and now the bowl is only half-full, and the pieces from the table and on the floor are back in the box.
“There, see?” Matthew says.
7:34 a.m.
“An hour and twenty-six minutes left,” I say.
“Yeah,” Matthew says.
Saturday is the best day because you don’t have to vacuum or wash clothes or mop or dust or sweep or shake out the rugs. We watch Saturday-morning cartoons instead—the old kind, like Bugs Bunny and Road Runner, because we are allowed to watch them even though we are not allowed to watch most things.
Our TV has a special machine in it that reads the CC (which stands for “closed-captioning”) so it can substitute for bad words. For example, if someone says a bad word like “butt,” the machine replaces it with “toe,” so people on our TV say things like “I want to kick your toe.”
After cartoons, Matthew and I run down the hall and wait at the door until my watch reads nine o’clock exactly. Then we push it open so fast, it swings around on its hinges and slams against the wall. We run across the bedroom and jump on Dad.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
“It’s Saturday morning, Daddy!”
Dad groans. “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.”
I always jump on his stomach when he starts groaning like this because it pushes all the air out of his lungs and sounds funny.
“Uuuuu—HUMPH!—uuuuuuh . . .”
We shake him until he opens his eyes.
“Come on, Dad. It’s nine. You said we could wake you up now,” I say. “We are going to play soccer together today, remember?”
“Yes, I know . . . okay, okay, I’m awake,” he says.
“Daddy, guess what,” Matthew says.
“What?” Dad asks.
“The sweet cereal is Honey O’s!” Matthew says. He says it like oath.

After Dad and I practice soccer Saturday afternoon, Mom makes me take a shower. She always makes me take a shower when I get sweaty, even if I just took one the day before. So I take my shower, and Dad...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593621999
• ISBN 13: 9780593621998
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 176
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Zeitfracht Medien GmbH; info-medien@zeitfracht.de; ; Ferdinand-Jühlke-Straße 7; Erfurt; 99095; Deutschland