Big Mouth and Ugly Girl [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Big Mouth

No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me?

Ugly Girl

All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.

... See more details below

More About This Book

Overview

Big Mouth

No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me?

Ugly Girl

All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
Ever make a stupid comment or joke, or say something you obviously didn't mean? Of course you have -- we all have. Was it ever taken out of context? Written in the wake of some highly publicized school shootings, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl takes a look at the shock waves that emanate from an overheard comment muttered in sarcasm, and the overzealous reaction of the school and surrounding community that follows.

High school junior Matt Donaghy is considered an okay guy. He gets good grades, writes for the school paper, is in the Drama Club, and is known for his witty, if immature, humor. Students and teachers seem to like him. But one day he says something that makes a few classmates think he's out to bomb the school. The school principal is notified, the police are called in, and rumors are abuzz. Even his buddies doubt his innocence, and none of the guys come forward in his defense. There is, however, someone else who overheard Matt's statement and understood his mocking intent. School renegade Ursula Riggs, or "Ugly Girl" as she refers to herself, doesn't know Matt very well but reveals what she heard and the context in which it was said -- even though her parents instruct her to mind her own business. But even if Ursula can help Matt clear up this misunderstanding, will life at Rocky River High School ever be the same again?

In her first novel for young adults, acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates delivers a striking story about friendship, family, community, support, betrayal, and self-confidence. This powerful novel makes us think carefully about what we say, to whom we say it, and what we mean. After closing this book, you'll ask yourself the same question I did: What if I'd said such a thing? (Michele D. Thomas)

Publishers Weekly
A high school junior leaps to her classmate's defense when his throwaway joke about blowing up the school makes him a suspected terrorist. "The relationship between the two grows credibly and compellingly, against a convincing high school backdrop," said PW in a starred review. Ages 12-up. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews (11) Fewer Reviews
Children's Literature
Loner Ursula Riggs has built an impenetrable persona for herself—warrior woman, alias Ugly Girl. Classmate Matt Donaghy has a big mouth, solely intended for entertaining his friends—until it gets him falsely accused of wanting to blow up his high school. When Ursula drags herself out of her shell to defend Matt, a friendship develops, with Matt writing numerous e-mails to her, always deleting the ones that reveal his truest feelings. In her first novel for young adults, prominent author Joyce Carol Oates raises provocative questions about the damage done to innocent, show-off kids who make inappropriate jokes. After Columbine, it's easy to believe the community's overreactions that threaten to ruin Matt, but it's more difficult to imagine anyone trusting his notoriously unreliable accusers. Though the cast of peers is weak, Matt and Ursula's relationship is compelling and genuine. The characterization of their distraught, and not always supportive, parents is equally revealing and poignant. The most memorable character, however, is Ursula herself. Ugly Girl, who doesn't cry, judge, or ever give in, finds it increasingly hard to remain alone. Readers will be fully involved in Matt and Ursula's unlikely friendship and in the larger issues arising from community fear. 2002, Harper Tempest/HarperCollins,
— Betty Hicks
KLIATT
To quote from the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, May 2002: In this tale of two 16-year-old high school students, an unlikely romance blossoms out of a police investigation. Matt Donaghy, eager to be popular, is "Big Mouth," whose joke about a school massacre is overheard and misconstrued—resulting in a detective inquiry and subsequent lawsuit that comes close to ruining his life and that of his family. Ursula Riggs, a tall, strong athlete who secretly calls herself "Ugly Girl," hides behind the harsh persona she has constructed to shelter her feelings. Unafraid of what others might think, she stands up for Matt when everyone else suspects him, and comes to his aid later when, ostracized and miserable, he is on the verge of suicide. When his beloved dog is kidnapped, Ursula again bravely comes to the rescue. A relationship slowly develops between the two over the course of the winter, as Matt comes to understand the far-reaching consequences of his big mouth and Ursula learns more about reaching out and relating to others. In her first novel for YAs, Oates shows the same skill in portraying family dynamics and violence that she has in her adult fiction. Ursula, angry and proud of being a misfit, is not at first an appealing character, but gradually her integrity wins over the reader, and it's interesting to have a female in the role of bold rescuer for a change. Some strong language. KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2002, HarperTempest, 266p.,
— Paula Rohrlick
VOYA
Ugly Girl Ursula Riggs has always been her own person, a loner who places perfectionist demands on herself. Matt Donaghy, or Big Mouth, has always been one of the popular, accepted kids until someone misinterprets his joking about a bomb and reports him to the administration. As the police lead him away, Big Mouth enters an isolation chamber built by rumors, prejudices, and false accusations. Only Ugly Girl can ignore the consequences and do what she believes is right. Ursula's statement clears Matt of all charges, and he returns to school thinking that life will return to normal. Suddenly, everyone is suspicious, and even old friends shun him. Through their shared experience, Matt and Ursula start a somewhat rocky friendship. Had this book not been assigned for review, this reviewer would have stopped after about fifty pages. There is just too much stuff and too little action. Half way through the book, however, readers will be hooked by these two gutsy teens. Oates delivers some realistic perceptions of the unforgiving adolescent world. Teen readers might prove unforgiving of the book, but both teen and adult readers will be glad if they hang in there even when the reading becomes slow-paced. PLB Bott <%ISBN%>0066237564
School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-While horsing around in the high school cafeteria, Matt Donaghy makes some remarks that land him in a world of trouble. Yanked out of fifth-period study hall by plainclothes policemen, he learns that he's suspected of plotting to bomb the school. In this day and age that's no joking matter. His friends are advised by their parents not to get involved, lest they fall under suspicion themselves. Only the resolutely individualistic, somewhat frightening Ursula Riggs, a girl he barely knows, is willing to speak up on Matt's behalf. With a combination of clear-sightedness and bravado she gets the principal to rethink Matt's suspension-and that's just the beginning of Oates's novel. The next three-quarters of the book become even more interesting, as the author explores the subsequent social pressures placed on the teenagers and adults in a fictitious, affluent suburb of New York City. Oates has a good ear for the speech, the family relations, the e-mail messaging, the rumor mills, and the easy cruelties waiting just beneath the veneer of civility. Matt's character and especially the heroic Ursula's are depicted with a raw honesty. Readers will be propelled through these pages by an intense curiosity to learn how events will play out. Oates has written a fast-moving, timely, compelling story.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A seasoned pro from the world of adult literature turns her keen observer's eye to young-adult realism, with notable success. Big Mouth is Matt Donaghy, and when the reader first meets him, he is being led from class under police escort, having been overheard in the cafeteria threatening to blow up the school. Ugly Girl is Ursula Riggs, athletic and alienated, and she is the only student who understands instantly that the terrorism accusations against Matt are wholly baseless and is willing to act to clear him. Thus begins a friendship that develops as Matt sinks further and further into depression with the realization that his friends were all too willing to abandon him and as Ursula allows herself to relinquish the safe distance she's always kept. Oates effectively evokes the culture of high school, where association is everything and rumor almost always preferable to truth. By beginning the tale with Matt's accusation, she leaves herself room for a leisurely exploration of the personal and social repercussions on the kids, on the school, and on the families. The narrative moves back and forth from third person to first person as it tells Matt's and Ursula's stories, respectively. Ursula herself is an effectively drawn character, a girl who feels such a need to defend herself from the world of conformity that she has created an alter-ego she refers to in the third person: "I wiped at my eyes, annoyed that they were wet. It must've been caused by the March wind off the river for Ugly Girl doesn't cry." If Matt isn't quite so effectively presented by comparison and if some of the secondary characters are so underdeveloped as to be stock, the story itself and the way it unfolds iscompelling enough to override these details. Honest and penetrating. (Fiction. YA)
ALA Booklist (starred review)
“A thought-provoking, character-driven drama.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A superb story bursting with themes relevant to high school life today.”
Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Should bring Oates a whole new generation of fans.”
Ruminator Review
“A divinely readable novel, one of the finest and most provocative in any genre of late.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Middle and high school kids will find a lot rings true in “Big Mouth and Ugly Girl.”
Washington Post
“Gripping.”

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061756221
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 10/13/2009
  • Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 288
  • Sales rank: 104,872
  • Age range: 13 years
  • File size: 915 KB

Meet the Author

Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award.

Biography

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most influential and important storytellers in the literary world. She has often used her supreme narrative skills to examine the dark side of middle-class Americana, and her oeuvre includes some of the finest examples of modern essays, plays, criticism, and fiction from a vast array of genres. She is still publishing with a speed and consistency of quality nearly unheard of in contemporary literature.

A born storyteller, Oates has been spinning yarns since she was a little girl too young to even write. Instead, she would communicate her stories through drawings and paintings. When she received her very first typewriter at the age of 14, her creative floodgates opened with a torrent. She says she wrote "novel after novel" throughout high school and college -- a prolificacy that has continued unabated throughout a professional career that began in 1963 with her first short story collection, By the North Gate.

Oates's breakthrough occurred in 1969 with the publication of them, a National Book Award winner that established her as a force to be reckoned with. Since that auspicious beginning, she has been nominated for nearly every major literary honor -- from the PEN/Faulkner Award to the Pulitzer Prize -- and her fiction turns up with regularity on The New York Times annual list of Notable Books.

On average Oates publishes at least one novel, essay anthology, or story collection a year (during the 1970s, she produced at the astonishing rate of two or three books a year!). And although her fiction often exposes the darker side of America's brightest facades – familial unrest, sexual violence, the death of innocence – she has also made successful forays into Gothic novels, suspense, fantasy, and children's literature. As novelist John Barth once remarked, "Joyce Carol Oates writes all over the aesthetical map."

Where she finds the time for it no one knows, but Oates manages to combine her ambitious, prolific writing career with teaching: first at the University of Windsor in Canada, then (from 1978 on), at Princeton University in New Jersey. For all her success and fame, her daily routine of teaching and writing has changed very little, and her commitment to literature as a transcendent human activity remains steadfast.

Good To Know

When not writing, Oates likes to take in a fight. "Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost," she says in highbrow fashion of the lowbrow sport.

Oates's Black Water, which is a thinly veiled account of Ted Kennedy's car crash in Chappaquiddick, was produced as an opera in the 1990s.

In 2001, Oprah Winfrey selected Oates's novel We Were the Mulvaneys for her Book Club.

    1. Also Known As:
      Rosamond Smith
    2. Hometown:
      Princeton, New Jersey
    1. Date of Birth:
      June 16, 1938
    2. Place of Birth:
      Lockport, New York
    1. Education:
      B.A., Syracuse University, 1960; M.A., University of Wisconsin, 1961

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

It was an ordinary January afternoon, a Thursday, when they came for Matt Donaghy.

They came for him during fifth period, which was Matt's study period, in room 220 of Rocky River High School, Westchester County.

Matt and three friends -- Russ, Stacey, Skeet -- had formed a circle with their desks at the rear of the room and were conferring, in lowered voices, about Matt's adaptation of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe into a one-act play; after school, in Drama Club, the four of them were scheduled to read William Wilson: A Case of Mistaken Identity for the club members and their advisor, Mr. Weinberg. It was a coincidence that Mr. Weinberg, who taught English and drama at Rocky River High, was in charge of fifth-period study hall, and when a knock came at the door of the room, Mr. Weinberg went to open it in his good-natured, sauntering manner.

“Yes, gentlemen? What can I do for you?”

Only a few students, sitting near the front of the room, took much notice. They might have registered a note of surprise in Mr. Weinberg's tone. But Mr. Weinberg, with his graying sandy hair worn longer than most of his male colleagues' at Rocky River, and a bristling beard that invited teasing, had a flair for dramatizing ordinary remarks, giving a light touch where he could. Calling strangers “gentlemen” was exactly in keeping with Mr. Weinberg's humor.

At the rear of the room, Matt and his friends were absorbed in the play, for which Matt was doing hurried revisions, typing away furiously on his laptop. Anxiously he'd asked his friends, “But does this work? Is it scary, is it funny, does it move?” Matt Donaghy hadsomething of a reputation at Rocky River for being both brainy and a comic character, but secretly he was a perfectionist, too. He'd been working on his one-act play William Wilson: A Case of Mistaken Identity longer than his friends knew, and he had hopes it would be selected to be performed at the school's Spring Arts Festival.

Typing in revisions, Matt hadn't been paying any attention to Mr. Weinberg at the front of the room talking with two men. Until he heard his name spoken -- “Matthew Donaghy?”

Matt looked up. What was this? He saw Mr. Weinberg pointing in his direction, looking worried. Matt swallowed hard, beginning to be frightened. What did these men, strangers, want with him? They wore dark suits, white shirts, plain neckties; and they were definitely not smiling. As Matt stared, they approached him, moving not together but along two separate aisles, as if to block off his route if he tried to escape. Afterward Matt would realize how swift and purposeful -- and practiced -- they were. If I'd made a break to get my backpack...If I'd reached into my pocket...

The taller of the two men, who wore dark-rimmed glasses with green-tinted lenses, said, “You're Matthew Donaghy?”

Matt was so surprised, he heard himself stammer, “Y-Yes. I'm -- Matt.”

The classroom had gone deathly silent. Everyone was staring at Matt and the two strangers. It was like a moment on TV, but there were no cameras. The men in their dark suits exuded an authority that made rumpled, familiar Mr. Weinberg in his corduroy jacket and slacks look ineffectual.

“Is something w-wrong? What do you want with -- me?”

Matt's mind flooded: Something had happened at home to his mother, or his brother, Alex...his father was away on business; had something happened to him? A plane crash...

The men were standing on either side of his desk, looming over him. Unnaturally close for strangers. The man with the glasses and a small fixed smile introduced himself and his companion to Matt as detectives with the Rocky River Police Department and asked Matt to step outside into the corridor. “We'll only need a few minutes.”

In his confusion Matt looked to Mr. Weinberg for permission -- as if the high school teacher's authority could exceed the authority of the police.

Mr. Weinberg nodded brusquely, excusing Matt. He too appeared confused, unnerved.

Matt untangled his legs from beneath his desk. He was a tall, lanky, whippet-lean boy who blushed easily. With so many eyes on him, he felt that his skin was burning, breaking into a fierce flamelike acne. He heard himself stammer, “Should I -- take my things?” He meant his black canvas backpack, which he'd dropped onto the floor beside his desk, the numerous messy pages of his play script, and his laptop computer.

Meaning too -- Will I be coming back?

The detectives didn't trouble to answer Matt, and didn't wait for him to pick up the backpack; one of them took charge of it, and the other carried Matt's laptop. Matt didn't follow them from the room; they walked close beside him, not touching him but definitely giving the impression of escorting him out of study hall. Matt moved like a person in a dream. He caught a glimpse of his friends' shocked faces, especially Stacey's. Stacey Flynn. She was a popular girl, very pretty, but a serious student; the nearest Matt Donaghy had to a girlfriend, though mostly they were “just friends,” linked by an interest in Drama Club. Matt felt a stab of shame that Stacey should be witnessing this. . . . Afterward he would recall how matter-of-fact and practiced the detectives obviously were, removing the object of their investigation from a public place.

What a long distance it seemed, walking from the rear of the classroom to the front, and to the door, as everyone stared. There was a roaring in Matt's ears. Maybe his house had caught on fire? No, a plane crash...Where was Dad, in Atlanta? Dallas? When was he coming home? Today, tomorrow? But was it likely that police would come to school to inform a student of such private news...

Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (AER). Copyright © by Joyce Oates. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Interviews & Essays

Back to School: In Her First Novel for Young Adults, an Esteemed Author Addresses the Fallout from Columbine
From the May/June 2002 issue of Book magazine.

Fans of the prolific Joyce Carol Oates are familiar with the author's penchant for young characters -- Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, You Must Remember This, and We Were the Mulvaneys all focus on the trials and yearnings of teenage girls. But Oates has only now written a book specifically for young adults. Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, a portrait of an awkward friendship between a loner school athlete and a boy she defends for joking about killing people in his school, is based on several post-Columbine newspaper accounts of students reporting on each other out of fear and paranoia. Oates, a creative-writing professor at Princeton University, explains why she wrote this book and describes her love for young characters.

Not many young adult novels address school violence. Why?
I'm surprised. Maybe publishers are a little wary about getting into it. There isn't any school violence in my novel -- it's basically just the threat, the specter of it. The subject will be addressed; it just takes some time. It's like writing about September 11th. Unless you're going to write about it in a really profound and significant way, you don't want to write something light. I know in my adult fiction, except for one very short piece I did for the London Observer, I am really nonincorporated in my writing. It's too important to just be in the background, and yet, unless you're going to write a whole thing about it, it can't be in the foreground either. You can't trivialize something like that.

A lot of young adult authors try to teach teens some kind of lesson. Did you feel compelled to do this in Big Mouth & Ugly Girl?
Not really. There's always a moral in my writing, although it's not necessarily explicit. In this little novel, these young people are made to realize certain flaws in their personalities and characters, which we all can learn. What's so wonderful about adolescents is that they change so rapidly. When you're forty or fifty or sixty years old, you just don't know how to change that well.

How is writing for young adults different from writing for adults?
It allows me to move swiftly without the layers of description and expository background that are more customary for adult fiction. Basically, it's just stripped-down adult fiction with more dialogue and less description. In adult fiction you do things with language -- for example, you might repeat certain adjectives for an atmospheric effect. In young adult fiction, that isn't done, and the chapters tend to be shorter. So I got the idea to write from one point of view and then another point of view, and that makes it move even faster.

What is it about adolescent characters that you find compelling?
I think many women still identify with adolescent selves, a feeling of uncertainty and a kind of awkwardness physically and not knowing your place in the world. I think adolescents are very sensitive about things that adults have learned to accept with more composure. I guess I just feel sympathetic with that age group. I feel at ease with them.

What kind of stories are teens looking for in their literature?
I think that they're looking for stories about their own lives -- to get help with their own lives, ways to behave and analyze emotional situations. I think it's less character-driven, but they obviously would like to identify with some characters. It's more situational.

Your book spans only about four months, but the characters grow up quite a bit.
Which is so typical. I've seen changes in my students, who are between the ages of 18 and 21, at Princeton. It's very interesting. They have such passionate friendships -- it's so touching. And of course their hearts are broken so easily. I really identify with that. And then the young man, I should call him a boy -- he's not a young man, he's a boy -- he just says things to be funny, he says the wrong thing, and he gets himself into trouble. And we've all had the temptation to say things, but when you're older, you bite your tongue, you learn to be more prudent.

He didn't even remember all that he said when he was joking about shooting people.
And you wouldn't, either. It's so sad, because this is going on in high schools. People are getting into trouble for what would possibly just be something in bad taste, making a joke about something that isn't funny. (Kristin Kloberdanz)

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Matt Donaghy has always been a Big Mouth. But it's never gotten him in trouble -- until the day Matt is accused of threatening to blow up Rocky River high School.

Ursula Riggs has always been an Ugly Girl. A loner with fierce, staring eyes, Ursula has no time for petty high school stuff like friends and dating -- or at least that's what she tells herself. Ursula is content with minding her own business. And she doesn't even really know Matt Donaghy.

But Ursula is the only person who knows what Matt really said that day … and she is the only one who can help him.

Topics for Discussion

  1. Discuss the situation in the school when Matt was first accused of threatening to blow it up. Do you think Mr. Parrish was right to call the police? What perpetuated the gossip and how do you think the adults involved could have handled the situation better? Do you think something like this could happen in your school?

  2. What do you think caused Ursula to stand up for Matt? After she helps, why do you think she avoids him?

  3. Discuss the relationship that Matt and Ursula have with their families. What are the similarities and differences? How do these family relationships change through the course of the novel? How do these people grow within the novel?

  4. Discuss Ursula and Matt's friendship. How do these two characters change throughout the novel? What effect did Ursula and Matt have on each other? What would their relationship be like if Matt had never been accused?

  5. Matt and Ursula begin their friendship over email. Many times they hit the Cancelinstead of Send key and say "easier thatway." Why do they say this? What role does email play in the development of their friendship?

  6. The Donaghys decide to file a lawsuit. What factors do you think helped them make this decision? How did it effect Matt? Ursula said she thought "asking for money made everything so cheap somehow." Do you agree?

  7. Discuss the role the media played. How did the coverage perpetuate the tensions and gossip in the school and in the town? Can you think of any examples of how something like this really could or did happen in your local news?

  8. Discuss Matt's relationships with his friends before he was accused. How did Matt's friends react after he was questioned by the police and suspended? Do you feel they betrayed him? Why or why not?

  9. Ursula and Matt both make the same comment several times in the novel: "I will not give up." Why is this such a strong statement? Discuss how and when they both use this statement throughout the book.

  10. Do you think Matt and Ursula see themselves as Big Mouth and Ugly Girl at the end of the novel.

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is the renowned author of many novels, including the National Book Award finalist and New York Times best-seller Blonde. A recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, Ms. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 26 )

Rating Distribution

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(12)

4 Star

(5)

3 Star

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 26 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 30, 2012

    It was good

    I like it and i dont like reading a lot not my think but i got in to this one but i would not read it again

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 27, 2011

    big mouth ugly girl

    big mouth ugly girl is a amaizimg book you should read it

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 18, 2006

    Big Mouth and Ugly Girl

    It was a pretty good book but, it needed more action like kind of suspense. The ending part was pathetic and there were parts were I would just get lost. I give it 3 stars.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 1, 2012

    Amazing

    One day matt is pulled out of class for questioning about an alleged bomb threat and ugly girl aka ursala riggs steps in to help
    Its a must read!!!!!!!!

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 17, 2011

    Berfer

    Reafdgr

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 13, 2008

    big mouth and ugly girl

    I think Big Mouth and Ugly Girl is a great book for people my age to read. It tells a story about two friends that have been rejected before in their lives. And even after their rejection, they still find goodness in each other. Ugly Girl has never had many friends, but Big Mouth started out being very popular with a lot of friends and everyone liked him. Then, Big Mouth got himself into some trouble, and Ugly Girl was the only one there that wanted to help him. This is a story of how there friendship grows as the days go by, and how nobody could tear them apart. Everybody needs a friend like one of them in their life. this was an overall great book.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 21, 2005

    Realistic Portray of two teens

    In Joyce Carol Oates first novel for young adults she once again proves herself as an outstanding interpreter. She is excellent at describing Matt and Ursulas thoughts. However it gets somewhat boring halfway through the book as hardly anything new comes in and it seems somewhat tiring reading her style of writing.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 18, 2003

    what a waste of time

    this book was soo boring..... its written for the mind set of a 10 year old i cound't handle it ugh i picked it for and english asignment so now im stuck with it i suggest u dont read it its pointless reading 'fun'

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 7, 2003

    well written AwEsOmE book!

    I thought that this book was outstanding, and one that you don't read everyday. I loved how realistic their relationship was, as in they didn't just meet and one day later they had fallen in love...that's not too realistic to me. They were friends, and then they slowly came to realize they liked each other more and more than that. I loved it and I thought the ending was great (the last few pages, and the last thing that happened) as well as the rest of the book. Two thumbs up as well as my big toes!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 28, 2003

    It was OK

    The book was exciting and then just stopped being exciting. I got bored in the last 10 or more chapters. The book was good though in the beginning.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 6, 2003

    BMUG

    This book is excited and better then the other books that I have read. I read this book during my 1st semster of summer school. Joyce C. Oates give a lot details about Matt and Urula. The book has both thoughts ( Matt and Urula) and it is a good discussion book with friends and family. I hope other people who like to read diffrent sides with a chapter and cauple chapters with different minds.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 24, 2002

    You won't believe how good this is

    I don't know how else to say it - this book is awesome. Any person I have recommended it to, whether it be a fellow teacher or one of my students, agrees with me. It is on my top ten list of all time favorite books, and I'm sure it will be on your list as well.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 20, 2003

    AWESOME!!!!!

    It was so funny! i was laughing histarically in my seat! two unlikely people being friends by the weirdest situation. can't tell you what it is. you're gonna have to find out yourself!!!!!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted November 27, 2002

    wow! i cant belive this book!

    well i think this book was excellent. it can relate to all teenagers. you can feel for "big mouth" and what he must have been going through. i mean who hasnt said something joking around that has been misheard and turned around. i know it happpened to me so i could reallly put myself in his place. and "ugly Girl" is such an amazing chaaracter. she sticks up for the guy she barely knows and they fall in love. i just kept on reading and reading wondering which way it would turn next. it was a great book and i know you will love it!!!!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 5, 2002

    This is a GREAT book!

    The book was great, even tough the problem only lasted like two chapters! It was how Ugly Girl made her life better and overcame problems. It also showed how your 'friends' can be jerks. This is a sweet story.I give it two thumbs up!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 10, 2002

    A Great Read For Teenagers

    I thought the book Big Mouth and Ugly Girl was really good. The characters Matt is different from the standard high school guys you read about and Ursula is unique in her own way;being self-sonscious of letting people read her. I admit at first the book did seem boring but as i got futher into the story I understood. I think what the author's trying to say is that you should watch how you act towards others and you have to watch what you say because it could come back to hurt you. Overall I thought the book was extremely well written no matter what others think.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 14, 2002

    AMAZING!!!!

    This book was so good! I couldnt put it down. I would stay up till 1 in the morning reading. ever since ifinished reading it i have been trying to find more like it.if ne1 no's ne please tell me

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 22, 2002

    Boring!

    I thought the book was very boring. The major problem only lasted like 2 chapters and then it was over and it talked about nothing!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 3, 2002

    One Small Step Above Series YA Fiction

    Although the action was somewhat predictable and thinly motivated in places I was compelled by the two main characters to read along and see how their relationship developed. Matt and Ursula were mostly believable, but the chemistry between them was more intriguing than either of the kids taken alone. The horror of a kidnapped pet dog was a stretch -- overly emotional. If you like to read about the dynamics of high school rumor mills (which seem more like middle school rumor mills...)you will go for this story. The identity of the 'real harasser' was too plainly predictable, and so, the story was unsatisfyingly lacking in real intrigue.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 25, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

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