ALA BestFiction for Young Adults * New YorkPublic Library Books for the Teen Age A riveting, scorching--and hilarious--autobiography by the award-winning author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes and Deadline.From trying to impress a member of the girls'softball team (with disastrous dental results) to enduring the humiliation ofhis high school athletic club initiation (olives and oysters play unforgettableroles), Chris Crutcher's memoir of the tricky road to adulthood is candid, disarming, laugh-out-loud funny, relevant, and never less than riveting.Hevividly describes a temper that was always waiting to trip him up even as itsustained him through some of the most memorable mishaps any child hassurvived. And how did this guy (he lifted his brother's homework through theentire tenth grade) ever become a writer, not to mention the author of fourteencritically acclaimed books for young people? The frontier may be mild, but the book is not.Fans of Tara Westover's Educated, Jack Gantos's Hole in My Life, andWalter Dean Myers's Bad Boy willlaugh, will cry, and will remember. "Funny, bittersweet and brutally honest. Readerswill clasp this hard-to-put-down book to their hearts even as they laughsympathetically."--Publishers Weekly(starred review)