Alt Ed [Hardcover]

Catherine Atkins (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

In order to avoid expulsion after committing various offenses, six very different high school students are required to meet with the school counselor, in a group, every Wednesday afternoon for a semester.

Susan Callaway, whose weight has kept her a shy, lonely outcast, narrates the story. Only Brendan, a gay classmate in the group, knows what landed her there. Susan is more than the sweet girl everyone thinks she is. She's had to cope with a lot more than anyone realizes. When the crank calls start-a male voice asking her to go out on a date-she's sure the calls were made by one of the guys in the group. But why is her brother never home when the calls come?

In her second novel, Atkins paints a gripping portrait of an overweight girl coming to terms with her father's estrangement, her brother's hostility, and the slow torture she's received at the hands of her classmates.

Editorial Reviews

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, VT
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

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 Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 198 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Juvenile (April 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399238549
• ISBN-13: 978-0399238543
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,502,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Characters you can relate to, November 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Alt Ed (Hardcover)

I loved the book, ALT ED by Catherine Atkins, because the characters were really people I could relate to from people I've known in my life. All her life, Susan has struggled with her weight and with getting acceptance. It's been especially hard because her mother is dead and her father doesn't understand her very well (He is her school's athletic coach and really into that). She doesn't feel like she can talk to him. She has a big crush on this nice guy at school, but this other guy, Kale, always picks on her. When Brendan, a fellow outcast, trashes Kale's truck, Susan gets blamed for it and is almost glad that people thought she struck back. She, Brendan, and Kale are all ordered to attend an after-school detention program, along with Susan's crush and two girls -- one, a popular cheerleader, and the other, a girl with a reputation (Amber, who was my favorite character). Although the six have little in common, they eventually develop some grudging friendships or at least a little bit of understanding. I thought the plot unfolded realistically and the characters were true to themselves too. Everything didn't end up perfect in the end, because that wouldn't really have happened with these people. Most of them still had prejudices, but at least they'd made some steps in the right direction. Fans of the classic movie, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, or other "group therapy" type books like Chris Crutcher's IRONMAN or STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES or Alex Flinn's BREATHING UNDERWATER will really like this book!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really enjoyable young adult fiction, May 1, 2003

By 

Ashareh (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alt Ed (Hardcover)

The fat girl, gay guy, cheerleader, jock-all in a class that is the alternative to expulsion from high school...think of this book as a modern day Breakfast Club, because it's all about people who think they have nothing in common discovering that (some of them, at least) can actually be friends, and really talk to each other. Susan Callaway, the self-described fat girl, is an engaging and interesting narrator who is struggling with her mother's death and her alienation at school, and trying to mend her relationships with her father and brother. If you liked The Misfits by James Howe, and pretty much anything by Chris Crutcher, then check this book out.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Kids of Small Town America, October 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Alt Ed (Hardcover)

Just when you think you know all you need to know about the school life of teenagers, along comes Catherine Atkins' novel Alt Ed to show us another aspect of it. Atkins' teens are neither urban nor suburban. They live in the rural town of Wayne where options are few and daily lives are lived in pods -- Balkanized by town tradition -- and the threat of the Other rules the day. This is particularly true among the youth at Wayne High. Atkins does a great job of bringing individual students out of their pods and into a room at the school where they must interact. Over the course of a semester, each of the Others spend time attacking, defending, moralizing, venting, and some of them even learning to see the flesh and bone beneath the armor each of them wear. What I particularly like about Alt Ed is that there are no stereotypes in it. No one is perfect and some of them don't even want to be. Some of the characters seem clueless, but even those (Dad, Kale) end up on the plus side. Maybe they only finish up with a 51 or 52 out of 100, but still. . . there is some forward progress in their thinking. Teen life in small town America can be every bit as gritty as it is in places with greater pizazz. Read Alt Ed -- or better yet hear it on audio as you read it --if you want a looksee at the milieu in which Susan Calloway, Kale Krasner, Randy Callahan, Tracee Ellison and Amber Hawkins operate. It's an eye opener, and it will make you a Catherine Atkins fan, as I am.