Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

The Tao Jones, known as T.J., is black, Japanese, and white. His mother abandoned him when she got heavily into crack and crank. As a child he was full of rage, but with the help of a therapist and his adoptive parents, he has turned out to be smart and funny. Injustice, however, still fills him with fury. When football star Mike Barbour bullies brain-damaged Chris Coughlin for wearing his dead brother's letter jacket, T.J. becomes infuriated. T.J. assembles a swim team of the most outrageous outsiders and misfits that he can find, and finagles it so that they will each receive a sacred letter jacket at the end of the season- which would be the thing that would anger Mike Barbour the most.

2002 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults
2002 Best Books for Young Adults

Wow. I loved this book, I couldn't put it down. I really wanted to see how it would play out- would T.J.'s team of misfits actually win letter jackets? Does Heidi ever recover from the horrible abuse of her ignorant and cruel step-father. This book has it all, I laughed, I cried- literally.