Read more
"This quirky novel brings humor, relatable characters, and an inside look into the world of homeschoolers. . . . A fun, character-driven novel likely to find readers among fans of realistic fiction." Informationen zum Autor Kathryn Ormsbee grew up with a secret garden in her backyard and a spaceship in her basement. She is the author of The Water and the Wild , The Doorway and the Deep , and The House in Poplar Wood and the YA novels Lucky Few , Tash Hearts Tolstoy , The Great Unknowable End , and The Sullivan Sisters . She’s lived in lots of fascinating cities, from Birmingham to London to Seville, but she currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. Klappentext Homeschooler Stevie Hart meets Max, a strange boy who's obsessed with death, but what starts off as fun together begins spiraling downward when Stevie's diabetes sabotages her fumbling romance with Max, and her best friend Sanger announces she's moving out of state.Lucky Few One For a dentist office receptionist, she had stunningly bad teeth. The ocher stains on her enamel were a mystery of Sherlockian proportions. What was the culprit? Was it years of coffee consumption? Tobacco use? Or some other foul substance equally capable of corrupting a pearlescent smile? “Do you need a school excuse?” she asked. I was far more interested in the answer to my dental whodunit than the answer the receptionist awaited. I was about to tell her something she wouldn’t like and wouldn’t understand. “No,” I told her. I said it politely. “I think both you and your cousin do,” she said. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we don’t.” The receptionist inched a blue square of paper across her desk. “Come on, honey,” she said, like she was coaxing a naughty dog out from under the porch. No choice was left to me. I was forced to drop the H-bomb. I said, “We’re homeschooled.” Bad-Teeth Receptionist blinked at me. Then she asked the question I got asked about seventy percent of the time upon H-bomb impact: “Oh, sweetie, don’t you miss being around people?” I was used to this. I was well versed in the homeschool stereotype. I understood that this receptionist was probably thinking, Lordy, she’s Amish and doesn’t have a cell phone and lives with fifteen inbred kinfolk. What I wanted to tell her, but never would, was that the realm of the home educated was a many-splendored, multifaceted thing. There was nuance. There was diversity. She couldn’t just slap a single, all-inclusive label on my forehead. She had to choose from an assortment of labels. If she wanted, she could pick from the list I had personally compiled in the ninth grade. I had divided the homeschooling population into four clean categories, as follows: Blue-Jean Jumpers The most common stereotype associated with the home educated. You know, families of seven or more. The standard issue of dress for boys is jeans two sizes too big, Velcro sneakers, and button-up plaid shirts (we’re talking the original hipsters). Girls wear long blue-jean jumpers, and when they want to get super insane, they choose the jumper with the embroidered sunflowers on the front. They are bound by some cultish church law to never cut their straggly blond hair or expose their ankles. The kids all look slightly soulless, like something out of Children of the Corn. They’re so painfully shy, they can’t place their own fast-food order—if their parents even believe in fast food. They attend church five days a week, don’t own a television, and live on a farm with chickens. The mom makes killer homemade monkey bread. Commonly sighted at: Church Home The homeschool co-op Granolas Hippie folk who are conscientious objectors to the public education system. Usually u...
