How to Get Suspended and Influence People

How to Get Suspended and Influence People
by Adam Selzer

14-year-old Leon sarcastically narrates the events that result when he decides to make an avant-garde sex education movie as an assignment for his "gifted and talented" class. Leon's video is weird but comforting, irrational but informative...and very quickly, banned at school.

Quick, quirky and fun, Leon and his classmates address some common contradictions found in public school where masturbation is often called normal but more often considered vulgar, where nudity may be classical but still censored, and where kids and adults will never see eye-to-eye.

This fast-paced novel will appeal to middle-readers who wonder what "normal" is and if they will ever be it. No violence, some cuss words, frequent references to nudity, body parts, and all the other things that absolutely fascinate 14-year-old boys. The book has a few on-page kisses, but everyone stays fully clothed, even when the garage blows up. Ages 12 to 16.

Read more »

Ten Miles Past Normal

Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O'Roark Dowell

When Janie was nine years old, she thought that that living on a farm and milking goats every morning was fun and cool and exciting. Now that she's a freshman in high school--in a city, where nobody else milks goats or gathers eggs before getting on the school bus--she thinks that living on a farm is weird.

Janie doesn't want to be weird. She wants to be normal. Then she joins the school Jam Band, meets an elderly man who turned a burned cross into yard art, makes friends with a sweet boy named Monster, and agrees to help her mother host a hootenanny. Before she knows what is happening, Janie has left "normal" ten miles behind her.

No cussing, no on-page violence (the civil rights activists do relate their fears of violence in Missippippi prisons during the 1960's but those events are far removed from the present action), no sex, but there are some very enjoyable romances and one romantic fail.

Recommended for ages 12 to adult.

Read more »