Flying Lessons & Other Stories: "How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium" by Matt de la Peña

by Ellen Oh
This collection, edited by We Need Diverse Books founder Ellen Oh, features short stories by popular writers of middle grade and young adult fiction.

Here are links to our lists for the anthology: How to Transform…; The Difficult Path; Sol Painting, Inc.; Secret Samantha; The Beans and Rice Chronicles of Isaiah Dunn; Choctaw Bigfoot, Midnight in the Mountains; Main Street; Flying Lessons; Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents; Sometimes a Dream Needs a Push
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. strive
    attempt by employing effort
    Respect them for this.
    Strive to be like them.
  2. subtle
    difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
    Shift your focus to other details of the drive. The radio news show he turns on. The smell of his steaming-hot black coffee. The scattered cars along the dark freeway, and the subtle tick of his turn signal whenever he changes lanes.
  3. ingrained
    deeply rooted; firmly fixed or held
    By the end of summer, these seemingly insignificant details will be ingrained in your brain.
  4. vouch
    give personal assurance; guarantee
    After the cop explains the situation, your pop will put on an uncomfortable smile and vouch for you. He'll say you're a good kid, that you're just down here to play some ball at a gym in Balboa Park.
  5. dilapidated
    in a state of decay, ruin, or deterioration
    It will take a little more than an hour for you to arrive at the large, dilapidated building with two locked green doors.
  6. uninitiated
    lacking relevant knowledge or experience
    While you wait for gym manager Jimmy to arrive by bicycle with his massive ring of rattling keys, listen to the grown men around you. To the uninitiated they are uneducated.
  7. crass
    so unrefined as to be offensive or insensitive
    They're poor. Black. Crass. Shifty. Steely-eyed.
  8. banter
    light teasing repartee
    And you will hear the brilliance. The poetry. The philosophy. The verbal dance of on-court banter. They will laugh harder and more often than anyone you've ever known.
  9. guttural
    relating to or articulated in the throat
    You know where to put a lob on the fast break so your big man can mash it down with a guttural growl.
  10. debacle
    a sound defeat
    Those first two weeks you'll participate in a grand total of one run—if you can even count the end-of-the-day, three-on-three debacle you spend guarding a homeless man wearing soleless Timberlands.
  11. instinctive
    unthinking
    The next morning your body will instinctively wake up at four-thirty.
  12. barrio
    a Spanish-speaking quarter in a town or city
    "Nobody thinks you're good enough to play here, comprende? Why don't you go on back to the barrio, esé."
  13. slink
    move or walk stealthily
    The outside world slinks off and hides, and all you know are the choreographed movements around you.
  14. choreograph
    plan and oversee the development and details of
    The outside world slinks off and hides, and all you know are the choreographed movements around you.
  15. generic
    not protected by trademark
    He claimed he was tired of watching you scoop handfuls of generic granola into your mouth every day.
Created on Wed Aug 05 10:12:11 EDT 2020 (updated Thu Feb 04 09:35:53 EST 2021)

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