num_pages: 176
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.
language: English
title: The Contender
titlecomplete: The Contender
genres: Fiction, Coming Of Age, Teen, School, Young Adult, Sports, Read For School, Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 4496
places: New York City, New York, Harlem, New York City, New York
series: The Contender
awards: awardedAt: -94665600000
name: Best Children's Books of the Year (Bank Street College of Education), awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Margaret A. Edwards Award
publisher: HarperCollins