My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters [Paperback]

Sydney Salter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2009

It’s the end of junior year, and summer is about to begin. The Summer of Passion, to be exact, when Jory Michaels plans to explore all the possibilities of the future--and, with any luck, score a boyfriend in the process. But Jory has a problem. A big problem. A curvy, honking, bumpy, problem in the form of her Super Schnozz, the one thing standing between Jory and happiness. And now, with the Summer of Passion stretched before her like an open road, she's determined for Super Schnozz to disappear. Jory takes a job delivering wedding cakes to save up for a nose job at the end of the summer; she even keeps a book filled with magazine cutouts of perfect noses to show the doctor. But nothing is ever easy for accident-prone Jory--and before she knows it, her Summer of Passion falls apart faster than the delivery van she crashes. In her hilarious and heartbreaking debut novel, Sydney Salter delivers a story about broadening your horizons, accepting yourself, and finding love right under your nose.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up—It's the summer before senior year and Jory is obsessing over two things: her giant nose and hottie Tyler Briggs. Believing that she can't have Tyler and a "Super Schnozz," she takes a job delivering cakes to save money for surgery. During a delivery, she meets Gideon, a guy with big brown eyes and an equally big nose. She's attracted to him, but is worried about what dating him will do to her social status. To complicate matters, Jory and her friend Megan compete for Tyler's attentions while Jory's mother, in an effort to be thin, forces her family to join her in crazy fad diets. As the pressure mounts, the teen, who begins to date Gideon, desperately looks to guys for validation and naively believes that a perfect nose will beget a perfect life. Readers will identify with her insecurities, but might be turned off by her melodrama. The humor is forced and the character development superficial. Salter literally writes off the unattainable Tyler just as his story line gets interesting. Teens looking for a character with a big nose and an even bigger sense of humor should read Emily Franklin's At Face Value (Flux, 2008), which features a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac. My Big Nose is strictly an additional purchase.—Kimberly Garnick Giarratano, Rockaway Township Public Library, NJ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The summer before senior year is Jory’s last chance to transform herself and leave behind her mediocre grades, unrequited crushes, and especially her ugly nose. Intent on earning money for a nose job, she finds a job delivering wedding cakes near her home in Reno, Nevada, even though she can barely handle a stick shift, never mind parallel parking. In her wry, spirited voice, Jory reveals her jealousy of her girlfriends, mistakes at work, conflict with her appearance-obsessed mom, muddles with various boys (including one who turns out to be gay), and, always, her anguish over her proboscis. Obsession is boring and repetitive, and this first novel is too long in descriptions of Jory’s mess-ups and the message-heavy resolutions, as she learns to see the best in herself and finds the perfect boyfriend. But the contemporary dialogue is rapid and funny, and teens will enjoy Jory’s comic self-deprecation and the way she gets the signals wrong, both while driving and on dates. Grades 8-12. --Hazel Rochman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Graphia (April 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152066438
• ISBN-13: 978-0152066437
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 5.2 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,462,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sydney Salter writes middle-grade and young adult fiction. She is the author of My Big Nose & Other Natural Disasters, Jungle Crossing, and Swoon At Your Own Risk. Sydney lives in Utah with her husband, two daughters, lazy cats, big hairy dogs, and a pair of quiet tortoises. When not writing, Sydney likes to read, think up adventures, experiment with new recipes, sample exotic chocolates, hike with her family and go to movies and rock concerts with her husband.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A story for every girl April 9, 2009

By Kathryn Gaglione

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I approached this book a little differently as I read it aloud with my roommate, and I can't imagine having read it any other way. It was so much fun to read this book with a friend and be able to share our own stories of poor self-image, lousy boy experiences and horrific summer jobs. We could totally relate to this book--not because we had experienced some trauma that had a profound effect on our lives, but because we are every-day girls who deal with every-day life.

Jory Michaels has a problem, and it's as plain as the nose on her face, mostly because it is the nose on her face. Her two best friends have emerged from their ugly-duckling phases and are now beautiful, confident young women ready to take senior year by storm. Her little brother Finn is a soccer star two years her junior who managed to score a date to senior prom when he was still a freshman. Her mom is perfectly proportioned, her dad is a workaholic and everyone around her knows where they are going in life. If only Jory's massive shnoz and perpetual virginity would stop getting in her way.

Her summer plan includes finding seasonal employment to pay for a nose job, discovering a passion and having sex. But it won't be that easy when she is a horrible driver and the only job she can find is delivering cakes. Not to mention that when water skiing, yoga, soccer, reading and classical music fail to perk Jory's interest, she begins to run out of things to become passionate about. Then her best friend starts hanging out with the guy she has been crushing on for twelve months, six days and however many hours, and the only boy who seems to be taking any notice of Jory is a juvenile delinquent with a super-snout of his own....

Sure there are times when I wished Jory would shut up about her nose and get more supportive friends, and don't even get me started on her superficial mother. But isn't that how life is? We get fixated on something so securely that we can't see past it and we let it rule our lives--that is part of human nature.

At a time when YA fiction has been flooded with books about beautiful, aloof, perfect girls, Sydney Salter has written a heartwarming books about an ordinary girl with ordinary problems yet managed to make an extraordinary novel. Full for laugh-out-loud funny moments, hide-under-the-covers embarrassing moments and call-your-mom-to-tell-her-you-love-her moments, My Big Nose stands out from the crowd. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars from missprint.wordpress.com May 6, 2009

By Miss Print VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Remember Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing? Back then she was a cute young actress with a rather distinct nose that gave her a unique face. In the 1990s she had a nose job that so altered her appearance that she was unrecognizable with the result that her career was arguably over. I found a site with two of the most unflattering pictures of Grey I have ever seen, but they illustrate my point. The change is so great that it's hard to say what the nose job actually accomplished because the before and after photos look like different people.

While reading My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters (2009) by Sydney Salter, I kept thinking of one thing. That thing was Jennifer Grey's nose job and how it totally changed her life in a not-so-great way.

Jory Michaels desperately wants to be one of the beautiful people. Or at least one of the smart people. She'd even settle for being an athletic person. But Jory is none of those things. Instead, she is the mediocre sheep in a family of beauty and talent. All, Jory is certain, because of her big nose--another outlier in a family with cute, small noses. Like Jennifer Grey, Jory is convinced that a nose job will solve her problems and ultimately make her life better in every possible way. She will be smarter and prettier, her family will appreciate her the way they worship her little brother, and her gorgeous crush will finally realize that she is perfect for him. In other words, with a new nose, Jory will be as perfect as everyone else in her life.

In order to ensure that she and "Super Schnoz" will part ways before the start of her senior year in high school, Jory take a job as a cake delivery person to fund her cosmetic surgery. She also begins a nice nose notebook to be ready for the big day....

It seems like everything is going Jory's way until an unlikely acquaintance, an unfortunate driving mishap or two, and other (natural) disasters force Jory to rethink everything she thought she knew about her nose, herself, and the perfect people she wanted so badly to emulate.

Set in Reno, Nevada My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters offers an interesting perspective on cosmetic surgery. Her hyperbolic fantasies about Super Schnoz and her new dream nose illustrate the irrational hopes Jory has pinned to the possibility of plastic surgery. At the same time, as the story progresses Jory begins to realize that there might be more to reinventing herself than restructuring her nose. That thread, set against the backdrop of friend-drama, and the social-climbing ambitions of her ever-dieting mother, gives this ostensibly quick read a fair amount of depth.

I enjoyed a lot of this book. At times the characters read younger than I would have expected for sixteen and seventeen-year-olds, but that likely says more about who I was at that age than anything else. Jory also reminded me a lot of Georgia Nicholson with her singular focus on boys but in a far less annoying way. I also had issue with the way friendships were treated. It must be the latin in me but I would have held a grudge a lot longer than Jory (and other characters in books I've read recently), but again that's probably just me.

I loved Jory's humor throughout the narrative, which made her lack of self-esteem at the beginning of the novel bearable. As part of a mother-daughter jewelery making duo, I also loved that beading came up in the story and was handled so realistically. At the start of the novel I will admit that I was not sure I could like Jory as a character, but by the end of the book I not only liked her, I was proud of her. My only disappointment was that the book didn't go on a little longer so I could spend more time with this new and improved heroine. Beyond that, My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters is a clever, humorous book about how finding beauty sometimes involves more introspection than anything else. Read more ›

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Funny and good alternative to vampire novels for teen girls! March 13, 2009

By Kiki VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I am always on the outlook for something for my 12 and 13 yo daughters to read. My 12 year old asked me to choose this one.

Jory Michaels is a high school girl who feels out of place in her family and in her world; she feels ordinary. Not extraordinarily smart, beautiful, everyone around her, family, friends, even the boy she likes, are gorgeous and spectacular to her way of thinking. She dreams of a nose job, that changing this physical part of her will make her fit in.

This is a story about growing up and learning who you really are, and feeling comfortable in your own skin.

While there are a few moments in the novel that involved drinking and some sexual moments (kissing, petting), they are handled tastefully, and turn into learning experiences for the main character, 17 year old Jory.

My 12 year old daughter really enjoyed this novel as well. She laughed and was not bothered by the more grown up scenes. She will usually put a book down if there is a lot of sexuality. I would feel comfotable recommending this to most moderate minded moms--Jory is a great alternative to Bella (of Twilight).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Realistic Characters, Good Lessons Learned, Both Funny & Sad July 9, 2009

By christinemm - The Thinking Mother TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Unfortunately, this book and I got off on the wrong foot. It is a shame that in the first few pages I was turned off by the main character's complaining tone and mistook it for whining. Thus this book sat on my "to be read" pile neglected for three months! When I finally picked it up to read it I was surprised at my initial impression. I grew to understand the main character more deeply and I realized she was NOT shallow as than her complaints about her life and about the appearance of her nose first implied.

I wound up being glued to the book. It was funny and later, sad. I started it in the afternoon and in between doing other things, had to find out what happened so stayed up until two in the morning to finish it off! For me it was a page-turner.

I quickly grew to like the main character as to me she is a very real girl. She and her friends reminded me in some ways of my friends and me as teenagers (despite me having been a teen back in the 1980s). The story focuses on the summer before their senior year of high school. Each has goals for their summer. These three close friends are imperfect, make mistakes and learn from them. Bad choices have negative consequences and in all the cases the girls learned from their errors.

At times I literally laughed out loud (when in public), which is a compliment to the author's storytelling. I found myself thoroughly liking the main character and rooting for things to go in the right direction for her, wanting a good outcome in the end....

A deeper message in the story is to love yourself as you are and to realize that people care more about your authentic, unique self rather than liking or loving a person based on the size of their nose, which I bet you can tell based on the title of the book is the main character's big complaint about her looks.

I also appreciated the message with multiple characters in the book deciding to not be promiscuous and to choose to remain virgins at least through the end of high school. The lessons learned when some drink too much alcohol (as underage minors) are clearly stated and it is not glamorized. The mother's constant attempts to clim the social ladder in town are clearly negative and the topic is handled well in the end. These messages are a wonderful antidote to the many young adult fiction books presently on the market for girls that focus on external appearances, designer clothing, having a social life filled with promiscuous sex, alcohol consumption and sometimes drug use, and being rich as the main points to the story.

I felt these characters were very "real" and believable. I grew to like them all.

This book has many talking points and lessons to be learned, which would make a great book discussion for a mother/daughter book club.

With the publication of this book I felt there is hope for young adult fiction for girls after all. We need more books like this and less of the other type, please! Read more ›