From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up-Susan Callaway is a painfully self-conscious sophomore at Wayne High. Constantly teased about her weight, she has no friends. Her longtime nemesis, Kale Krasner, is a slow-witted bully whom she suspects is behind the harassing phone calls she's been getting. When she meets openly gay Brendan Slater in the school library, she makes friends with this fellow outcast, and together they surreptitiously deface Kale's pickup truck. This act of vandalism lands them both in a new 12-week, after-school group led by the head guidance counselor and designed as an alternative to expulsion for six students with serious infractions. Meeting in a stuffy trailer, the Alt Ed group, bound by confidentiality, also includes a football player, a popular cheerleader, a tough girl, and Kale. In short chapters, these teens begin to talk, but honesty and trust come hard in a group divided by social status, homophobia, ugly rumors, sexism, and intolerance, and it is sometimes hard to differentiate personalities with so much heated dialogue. With Alt Ed discussions so frank, argumentative, and sometimes downright rude, Mr. Duffy gently tempers the tone, and the sharing of feelings gradually helps to build respect and understanding among members. When the group ends, all six teens are stronger-even Kale shows signs of rehabilitation. Although the novel features the popular themes of adolescent self-acceptance and belonging, Atkins's attempt to address so many teen issues feels diffuse and contrived and doesn't fully succeed.
Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VTCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gr. 8-10. The fat girl, the gay guy, the slut, the cheerleader, the sociopath, the good guy. Atkins takes a group of stock characters, puts them together in an alternative education class, and comes up with a story that transcends the usual parameters. Susan, overweight, motherless, and the object of derision of one of her fellow alt ed classmates, narrates. Each kid attends the class because he or she has done something that would otherwise have resulted in expulsion. Those circumstances are not revealed until the end, but the process--essentially group therapy sessions--lifts the veil on the teens' lives and shows what's hidden by their personas. Atkins has chosen a difficult task: stereotyping her characters and then making them three-dimensional. Her efforts aren't always successful; the friendship between the fat girl and the gay guy, for instance, is almost a stereotype in itself. Most of the characters, however, come to life in new and interesting ways, and Susan's story is strong, because she is reinventing family relationships as well as trying to communicate with her peers. Despite the predictability, kids will be drawn to this novel about teens they'll recognize, sometimes too well.
Ilene CooperCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
