Writing was beautiful and enjoyable to read, but the story just drug on too long (over 500 pages). DNF, though I read about 250 pages that I enjoyed, but then became repetitious and monotonous. ( )

Summary: The setting is a very small Montana town, where Sam the English teacher is going to be the basketball coach one last time. Sam takes on the responsibility of coaching a number of kids from all different backgrounds. This story follows the loss of the basketball team, the life of Sam, and how some small town kids make it in their day to day lives.

Personal Response: I don’t normally like sports books, but this book is anything but. This book is a heartwarming story love and loss, and beating all of the odds. This book will be one of my favorite books of all times. West describes the small Montana town to a tee, and beautifully describes what it is like to go to school in a very small town.

Curriculum Connection: I would suggest this book for teenagers who play some kind of sport. This book would be a great read about what it is like to belong to a team and how to overcome when the odds are stacked against you. ( )

Summary – Sam became the basketball coach in Willow Creek to escape what was going on in his life. He never expected the strength and passion of the people he met there to change his life forever. The kids’ bravery and unwillingness to quit motivate Sam to do the same. The basketball team goes on to win the state tournament and encourage the small town to keep living.

Personal Response – This is one of my favorite books because the characters and writing is so real. I instantly became sucked into life in Willow Creek and the humor, passion, loss, and determination will touch your heart. This book is also based on a true story and I think that makes it easier to relate to.

Curricular Connections – Although this book has some touchy real life issues that the characters are dealing with, I think it could still be used in a high school English classroom. This could be an assigned reading book or a choice reading book to look at real life in a small town. It could also be used as a book study with high school students doing a history project on Montana. ( )

Interesting read. Not my usual genre but the title caught my eye & I brought it home from the library. Small town basketball team with more guts and luck than sense and resources. I was drawn to it by other circumstances, but those for the most part were left unsettled. How did the a*hole father fare in the long run? What about his son? Central characters at the beginning were sacrificed for the game, ie, the Painter brothers, Pete & his grandmother. Still, over 500 pages & I did finish it in like 4 nights. Maybe I like basketball more than I realized. ( )

I completely lost my heart to this book. The title of this book is taken from an old American Indian legend: A group of Crow warriors returning from a hunt finds that all of the inhabitants of their camp have died from typhoid. In the belief that they will join their loved ones in the afterlife, they blind their ponies and ride them off a cliff.

The book starts out with the line “Hope is hard to come by in the hard-luck town of Willow Creek. Sam Pickett and five young men are about to change that”. Willow Creek's high school basketball team is the Broncs, commonly referred to in town as the glue factory, with an unbelievable record of 0-93 over the past five years. Their outstanding accomplishment is "fielding five standing, breathing boys" to form a basketball team. When Olaf Gustafson, a 6' 7" exchange student from Norway, and Peter Strong, an excellent basketball player who has come to live with his grandmother this year, Sam thinks it just might be possible to break that record.

They win. They lose. They play ball. But that's not all. Each of the characters in the book carries a painful past. As they root for the team's hope for success, they become a part of something bigger and better than they are. The story twists and turns in subtle ways, moving through each home, finding the secret so painfully locked in each of the closets. The author filled the town of Willow Creek with characters so vividly cast that they become real as relatives, and their stories were full of humor, passion, loss. and determination. Each one touched me and made me feel like I lived in Willow Creek.

I admit I skimmed the long, in-depth descriptions of the basketball games. I’m glad they were there, since they gave me a sense of what was really happening for the boys, but they aren’t what drew me into the story. The book does have some predictability issues that made absolutely no difference in my enjoyment of the story. Sometimes you read the book you should read at the time you need to read it and that's what happened to me with Blind Your Ponies. Give it try sometime. ( )