King of the Mild Frontier

<p><strong>ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults * </strong><strong>New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age</strong></p> <p><strong>A riveting scorching--and hilarious--autobiography by the award-winning author of <em>Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes</em> and <em>Deadline</em>.</strong></p><p>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.</p><p>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?</p> <p>The frontier may be mild but the book is not. Fans of Tara Westover's <em>Educated</em> Jack Gantos's <em>Hole in My Life</em> and Walter Dean Myers's <em>Bad Boy</em> will laugh will cry and will remember.</p> <p>Funny bittersweet and brutally honest. Readers will clasp this hard-to-put-down book to their hearts even as they laugh sympathetically.--<em>Publishers Weekly</em> (starred review)</p>