Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Cooking! (From the Highly Scientific Notebooks of Phineas L. MacGuire)

The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

Dovey Coe

Miles to Go

Libba: The Magnificent Musical Life of Elizabeth Cotten

Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

The Mother-Daughter Book Club

How to Rock Best Friends and Frenemies (How to Rock, 2)

Janie Gorman wants to be normal. The problem with that: she's not. She's smart and creative and a little bit funky. She's also an unwilling player in her parents' modern-hippy, let's-live-on-a-goat-farm experiment (regretfully, instigated by a younger, much more enthusiastic Janie). This, to put it simply, is not helping Janie reach that "normal target." She has to milk goats every day&hellip;and endure her mother's pseudo celebrity in the homemade-life, crunchy mom blogosphere. Goodbye the days of frozen lasagna and suburban living, hello crazy long bus ride to high school and total isolation--and hovering embarrassments of all kinds. The fresh baked bread is good&hellip;the threat of homemade jeans, not so much. It would be nice to go back to that old suburban life&hellip;or some grown up, high school version of it, complete with nice, normal boyfriends who wear crew neck sweaters and like social studies. So, what's wrong with normal? Well, kind of everything. She knows that, of course, why else would she learn bass and join Jam Band, how else would she know to idolize infamous wild-child and high school senior Emma (her best friend Sarah's older sister), why else would she get arrested while doing a school project on a local freedom school (jail was not part of the assignment). And, why else would she kind of be falling in ""like"" with a boy named Monster-yes, that is his real name. Janie was going for normal, but she missed her mark by about ten miles&hellip;and we mean that as a compliment. Frances O'Roark Dowell's fierce humor and keen eye make her YA debut literary and wise. In the spirit of John Green and E. Lockhart, Dowell's relatable, quirky characters and clever, fluid writing prove that growing up gets complicated&hellip;and normal is WAY overrated.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Cooking! (From the Highly Scientific Notebooks of Phineas L. MacGuire)

Preston McDaniels, Frances O'roark Dowell, 2014

The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

Frances O'roark Dowell, 2009

Dovey Coe

Frances O'roark Dowell, 2000

Miles to Go

Miley Cyrus, 2009

Libba: The Magnificent Musical Life of Elizabeth Cotten

Laura Veirs, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, 2018

Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

Rita Williams-Garcia, 2017

The Mother-Daughter Book Club

Heather Vogel Frederick, 2007

How to Rock Best Friends and Frenemies (How to Rock, 2)

Meg Haston, 2010