Prepared by: Marci Salerno for South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominees 2005

Booktalk #2

The greatest joy that 16-year-old Ben Bancroft has is settling into the Rialto Theatre to watch Bride of Frankenstein again. It's his escape from cerebral palsy and a life where his overprotective grandmother is his only parent. He certainly never expected to run in to Colleen Minou, well-know stoner. And Grandma isn't impressed when Colleen, dollup up in ripped tights with a neon miniskirt, asks for a ride home and barfs down the side of the car--the outside, fortunately. It's an unlikely friendship between two lonely teenagers from different part of the social campground. Ben's an expensive RV with a flat tire, and Colleen is like the ripped old Army tent we had when I was a kid, that turned anything it touched permanently green if it rained, but they discover they can talk to each other. And isn't that what friendship is about?

By Cindy Claypool of King County Library System for Evergreen Young Adult Book Award

Booktalk #3

Have you ever noticed how kids come up with names for different groups of people in school?  Do you know who the jocks are?  How about the brainy kids?  What other groups of kids are there at this school?    Colleen Minou is from a home with absentee parents and a serious drug problem.  Ben Bancroft has Cerebral Palsy and lives with his over-protective grandmother.  Can you imagine a girl, who is into getting high becoming friends with a kid, who is physically handicapped?  It doesn't seem very likely, but that is exactly what happens in the book Stoner and Spaz by Ronald Koertge.  (Cathy Hesselink,  khesselink@sc.rr.com, CLIS Student - USC)