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ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: a year in an american high school

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I was riveted by this carte-blanche-access account of real teens in a real school. "American Teen" has nothing on Cooper! I highly recommend this alternately heartbreaking and hopeful story.

Walking through the hallways of Walton Payton High School are a very selectively diverse group of students. Like its location, the students are all from different worlds but come together in one place. Out of the entire school, eight students stand out the most, in more ways than one.

First there is Anais, the dancer. Dancing is obviously her life, spending every day going to dance practice, hoping that one day she will be able to attend Julliard.

Then there is Daniel, the school's class president who is all business when it comes to academics and his future, not one to stand by stereotypes that people have against him because of his race.

Next is Emily, the girl's soccer captain since she was a junior. She doesn't fool around on or off the field.

Maya is the actress, always in every school play. Her acting is the only way she can shake off her little spasms and her OCD-ish routines.

Diana is very proper and polite. And also very smart, although she never shows it. Never talking in class, even though she knows the answers, she keeps to herself, having only one true friend since the other one left.

Aisha is the new girl, transferring from her last school located in Florida. She knows that this is only for a year, since her parents move all the time, so why make friends?

Zef is odd, and he knows it and isn't ashamed of it. Loving the sound of his own music and talking to himself, for some reason students are intrigued and are drawn to him.

And last but not least is Anthony. His comfort zone is located in only one place in the school, the cafeteria.

Some know what they want to accomplish this year, like becoming the best leader the school has ever seen or taking their time to achieve levels that they have never seen before, while others aren't so sure what their outcome will be. One thing they do have in common is college. Whether or not its for them or not and whether or not they will get into the college they so desperately need to escape to.

Inserted details of what goes on during school hours, from who sits where to the appropriate acknowledgements to old friends, gives this non-fiction account an extra sense of reality, which coincides with the lives of eight very different teens. Captivating and unique, Elisha Cooper manages to write a true account that can tell a story so raw and so real.

Reviewed by: Randstostipher "tallnlankyrn" Nguyen

It's hard for adults to imagine having to survive high school again, and maybe it's hard for high schoolers to imagine what anything beyond might hold, so this book has difficult territory to cover from the outset. How can the author make fresh what we've all been through and often hoped to forget? Fortunately, Cooper's patient observations and painterly eye let us slip in unseen into the chaos. With a point of view that is clearly honest, sometimes stern, and deliciously wry, he manages to pace us through a place that seems to spin at the speed of teen. It's hard not to think of the ordinary as heroes, and therefore vice versa, and it makes this story a wild success. Definitely for your must-read list!

When you spend your days reading YA novels like Gossip Girl and Gingerbread, you tend to view high school as a place where a bunch of shallow, back-stabbing, albeit totally together and well-coiffed, brats come together to compare notes. Ridiculous/ Hilarious/ Terrible/ Cool reminds jaded adults like myself that this is so not the case. This book reminded me that it's not easy to be a high school student, and it's particularly hard to be a senior. Work, tests, college application essays, dance, theater, soccer, student council and other extra-curricular activities in and out of school - it's enough to give any adult anxiety, let alone 17-year-olds. How do they do it? And in the case of 6 of the 8 students observed in this book, how do they do it so well?

Walter Payton High School is a good high school. Teens from all over Chicago apply to become students, and with the motto "We nurture leaders," it's no wonder so many kids want to go to this new school. It's also no wonder that so many of the students observed succeeded in accomplishing their goals, or at least most of them. Having said this, make no mistake, Walter Payton is still an urban high school. The infamous Cabrini Green Housing Projects loom to the West of the school. It is diverse with a third of the students being black, a third white and a third Latino, and with a small percentage of Asian students. Expectations are high, and security is tight. It's not easy to succeed at Walter Payton. What these six seniors accomplished is pretty impressive. As for the juniors, Anthony and Zef, they have another year to get it together, and the reader has no doubt that they will. This book definitely fills one with hope for future generations.

For the rest of this review and others, see my site.

I read Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool, certain for a chapter or two that I would have a difficult time keeping track of the eight students whose lives the book chronicles. And indeed, there were a few times in September and October (the book is chaptered around an academic calendar) that I confused Anais with Aisha or Diane with Emily. Somewhere before winter break, I was firmly sucked into the hopes and dreams of all eight lives. Elisha Cooper patiently and colorfully details the respective minefields his subjects, 6 seniors and 2 juniors, must navigate. Whether it's getting into Harvard, getting to the state finals or just getting to school on time, Cooper effectively reminds me of the herculean tasks that are met every year by high school upperclassmen. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

This book came across my desk and it took me a while to even open the cover. It's about high school after all - I was happy to have forgotten high school. I was surprised, however, to find myself enjoying the way Cooper presented the students' stories. They may be seventeen, but they're human. I enjoyed watching them struggle after already having gone through it. Though I think many of them have more grace than I ever did (still?). Short version - I liked the book and would recommend it.

Cooper follows up his witty "Crawling: A Father's First Year" with another gem. In "R/H/T/C", he entertains with the narrative of eight Chicago high school students through their senior year, capturing the challenges of self-absorbed adolescence as I had forgotten it. He shows these kids for who they are, avoidig tempting cliches, instead weaving in his trademark wit and analogisms. I often found myself laughing out loud. The book brought back memories of classmates of old, and a little bit of myself in one of the characters (but im not telling which one!). A really enjoyable read.

As an adult reading ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool, one can't but help to be taken back to the days in high school. And, to feel fairly relieved not to be there again. The excitement of having your whole life in front of you, but also the angst of an uncertain future and the peer pressure to underachieve, as well as the complications of being a youth in 2008 -- all these things come through via the subjects of Cooper's book, and Cooper does a great job of presenting them in a (fairly) dispassionate light so that the reader can more experience than judge the happenings. As a father of a <1 year old girl, I read ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool thinking all the while of what lies ahead for my little girl and thinking, "can I keep her a toddler all her life??" but also realizing that the enormity of the exciting experiences that await her!

Cooper does a great job of detailing today's high school students' experience. Some parts of that experience are universal and regardless of the background of the reader, they will be able to identify with some portion of the protagonists' lives - whether they want to remember those high school days or not. At the same time, Cooper deftly notes what is new, not least of which is technology and Starbucks. These compelling stories are literally illustrated with Cooper's distinct and appealing artwork.