About the Book

Whether trying to impress members of the girls' softball team--with disastrous dental results--or enduring the humiliation of his high school athletic club initiation, Crutcher's recollections of the tricky road to adulthood is peppered with hilarious, heartbreaking, and unforgettable events.

Book Synopsis

ALA Best
Fiction for Young Adults * New York
Public 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 of
his high school athletic club initiation (olives and oysters play unforgettable
roles), Chris Crutcher's memoir of the tricky road to adulthood is candid,
disarming, laugh-out-loud funny, relevant, and never less than riveting.
He
vividly describes a temper that was always waiting to trip him up even as it
sustained him through some of the most memorable mishaps any child has
survived. And how did this guy (he lifted his brother's homework through the
entire tenth grade) ever become a writer, not to mention the author of fourteen
critically 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, and
Walter Dean Myers's Bad Boy will
laugh, will cry, and will remember.

"Funny, bittersweet and brutally honest. Readers
will clasp this hard-to-put-down book to their hearts even as they laugh
sympathetically."--Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

From the Back Cover

Do you know:

• A good reason to be phobic about oysters and olives?
• How shutting your mouth can help you avoid brain surgery?
• How to survive in the winter wilderness with only a fishing pole and a sausage?

Review Quotes

"Funny, bittersweet and brutally honest. Readers will clasp this hard-to-put-down book to their hearts even as they laugh sympathetically." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Full of heartbreak, poignancy, and plenty of hilarity. This honest, insightful, revealing autobiography is a joy to read." - Booklist (starred review)
"Essential for the many fans of Crutcher's work, and new readers will go from here to his fiction." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)