From Booklist
Gr. 4^-6. Zach wishes he wasn't the shortest, scrawniest boy in the sixth grade. Despite all his chin-ups and workouts, his muscles look like zits. A girl in his class agrees to teach him tae kwon do: does that mean she likes him or that she wants to fight? Then he's invited to his first boy-girl party, and he's ecstatic. Elated. Terrified. What do you do at a boy-girl party? He's been thinking about girls all the time lately. He wishes his best friend, Dunk, would be interested, too, instead of wanting to gross out girls, chasing them around the cafeteria with spaghetti hanging out of his nose. Or is Dunk really as uninterested as he says? This is a laugh-out-loud story about growing up male, written without a trace of condescension. The dialogue captures how boys tease and play on the edge of hostility; how loyalty and jealousy can get in each other's way, even with best friends; what it feels like to be on the verge of adolescence, dreaming of girls, discovering the wonder that "females were made so . . . intelligently!" There's one set teacher's speech about artistic types being heroes, not wimps, but the messages are light, and they grow from the story. Kids will recognize that macho posturing can hide vulnerability and that even though the worst does happen, you get over it. Hazel Rochman
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Zach is small for a sixth-grader and the girls at school make fun of him, but when one girl in his class starts showing him some tae kwon do moves and teaching him about martial arts, things begin to change.
