Boy Book [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Cringe, laugh, and cry with Ruby Oliver as she learns to deal with boys, best friends, and her panic attacks!
 
Join Ruby Oliver at the start of her junior year at Tate Prep as she confronts:

• the secret about Noel
• mysterious notes from Jackson
• the interpretation of boy-speak
• the horrors of the school trip
• new entries in The Boy ...

See more details below

Overview

Cringe, laugh, and cry with Ruby Oliver as she learns to deal with boys, best friends, and her panic attacks!
 
Join Ruby Oliver at the start of her junior year at Tate Prep as she confronts:

• the secret about Noel
• mysterious notes from Jackson
• the interpretation of boy-speak
• the horrors of the school trip
• new entries in The Boy Book

There are Fruit Roll-Ups.
There is upper-regioning.
There are so many boys to choose from!
And there are penguins.
 
Only Ruby can keep her readers on her side even as those around her wonder, What is she thinking?!

 

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Ruby Oliver, the smart, neurotic heroine from The Boyfriend List, is now 16 and a junior scholarship student at Tate Prep. She's still in therapy, and still trying to cope with losing her boyfriend to her best friend plus her new social standing as a "certifiable leper." Through sessions with Dr. Z and spending time with "The Boy Book" (a "Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them" this also serves as the novel's subtitle), which she wrote with Kim, Nora and another friend, Ruby begins to process what happened. She builds a new circle of friends, even rekindling her friendship with Nora. But she faces tests along the way: Ruby's ex leaves her flirty notes, even though he is with Kim; she has a panic attack after a confrontation with Kim; and she must decide what to do when the great guy that Nora likes tells Ruby he wants to kiss her. Each chapter begins with an excerpt from "The Boy Book," which is hilarious, and sometimes rather racy (e.g., "What to Wear When You Might Be Fooling Around" advises a "shirt that buttons up the front, for obvious reasons"). The book not only covers topics teens obsess over, but it helps illustrate the connection Ruby had with her friends, especially Kim, and what a loss she has suffered. Ruby's overanalytical, fast-paced and authentic narration will win over new devotees, while her loyal fans will no doubt hope for more. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
From The Critics
In this sequel to The Boyfriend List, Lockhart continues to expertly capture the sentiments and voice of a teenage girl. Main character Ruby Oliver narrates the sweet story of her junior year of high school, covering all the major topics in the process. She deals with avoiding ex-boyfriends, making new friends, fighting with old friends, and coping with parents. Between all this, Ruby makes time to visit her psychologist, which provides the reader with a bit of catch-up and another view on her life. Wholesome and generally cheerful, Ruby is easy to relate to, making her an ideal heroine. She's self-analytical, which works to her advantage, and her conflicts are universal and important without being earth shattering, making this novel a pleasurable read. KLIATT Codes: J--Recommended for junior high school students. 2006, Random House, Delacorte, 208p., $15.95 and $17.99. Ages 12 to 15.
—Joanna Solomon

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780375848803
  • Publisher: Random House Children's Books
  • Publication date: 4/22/2008
  • Sold by: Random House
  • Format: eBook
  • Sales rank: 72,999
  • File size: 440 KB
  • Items ship to U.S, APO/FPO and U.S. Protectorate addresses.

Meet the Author

E. Lockhart
E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart is the author of The Boyfriend List, Fly on the Wall, and The Boy Book. She once portrayed both Peter Quince and a tree in a drama school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, wearing an electric-blue unitard. Her theatrical career ended soon after.

Read an Excerpt

The Boy Book

A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them
By E. Lockhart

Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Copyright © 2006 E. Lockhart
All right reserved.

ISBN: 0385902395

1.
The Care and Ownership of Boobs

(a subject important to our study of the male humanoid animal because the boobs, if deployed properly, are like giant boy magnets attached to your chest.

Or smallish boy magnets. Or medium.

Depending on your endowment.

But boy magnets. That is the point.

They are magnets, we say. Magnets!)

1.If you jiggle, wear a bra. This means you. (Yes, you.) It is not antifeminist. It is more comfy and keeps the boobs from getting floppy.

2.No matter how puny your frontal equipment, don't wear the kind with the giant pads inside. If a guy squeezes them, he will wonder why they feel like Nerf balls instead of boobs. And if you forget and wear a normal bra one day, everyone will then speculate on the strange expanding and contracting nature of your boobage. (Reference: the mysteriously changing chestal profile of Madame Long, French teacher and sometime bra padder.)

3.A helpful hint: For optimal shape, go in the bathroom stall and hike them up inside the bra.

4.Do not perform the above maneuver in public, no matter how urgent you think it is.

5.Do not go topless in anyone's hot tub. Remember howCricket had to press her chest against the side of the Van Deusens' tub for forty-five minutes when Gideon and his friends came home? Let that be a lesson to you. (Yes, you.)

6.Do not sunbathe topless either, unless you're completely ready to have sunburnt boobs whose skin will never be the same again (Reference: Roo, even though she swears she used sunblock) or unless you want to be yelled at by your mother for exposing yourself to the neighbors (Reference: Kim, even though really, no one saw and the neighbors were away on vacation).

--from The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (A Kanga-Roo Production), written by me, Ruby Oliver, with number six added in Kim's handwriting. Approximate date: summer after freshman year.

The week before junior year began, the Doctors Yamamoto threw a ginormous going-away party for my ex-friend Kim.

I didn't go.

She is my ex-friend. Not my friend.

Kim Yamamoto was leaving to spend a semester at a school in Tokyo, on an exchange program. She speaks fluent Japanese.

Her house has a big swimming pool, an even bigger yard, and a view of the Seattle skyline. On the eve of her going away, so I hear, her parents hired a sushi chef to come and chop up dead fish right in front of everyone, and the kids got hold of a few wine bottles. Supposedly, it was a great party.

I wouldn't know.

I do know that the following acts of ridiculousness were perpetrated that night, after the adults got tired and went to bed around eleven.

1.Someone chundered behind the garden shed and never confessed. There were a number of possible suspects.

2.People had handstand contests and it turns out Shiv Neel can walk on his hands.

3.With the party winding down and all the guys inside the house watching Letterman, Katarina Dolgen, Heidi Sussman and Ariel Olivieri wiggled out of their clothes and went skinny-dipping.

4.Nora Van Deusen decided to go in, too. She must have had some wine to do something like that. She's not usually a go-naked kind of girl.1

5.A group of guys came out onto the lawn and Nora's boobs were floating on top of the water as she sat on the steps of the pool. Everyone could see them.

6.Shep Cabot, aka Cabbie, who squeezed my own relatively small boob last year with great expertise2 but who is otherwise a lame human being as far as I can tell, snapped a photo--or at least pretended he did. Facts unclear upon initial reportage.

7.Nora grabbed her boobs and ran squealing into the house in search of a towel. Which was a bad idea, because she wasn't wearing anything except a pair of soggy blue panties. Cabbie snapped, or said he snapped, another photo. The rest of the girls stayed coyly in the pool until Nora, having got her wits together and wearing a pair of Kim's sweatpants and a T-shirt, came out and brought them towels.

I know all this because no one was talking about anything else on the first day of school.

Nobody spoke to me directly, of course. Because although I used to be reasonably popular, thanks to the horrific debacles of sophomore year--in which I lost not only my then-boyfriend, Jackson, but also my then-friends Cricket, Kim and Nora--I was a certifiable leper with a slutty reputation.

Meghan Flack, who carpools me to school, was my only friend.

Last year, Meghan and her hot senior boyfriend, Bick, spent every waking minute together, annoying all the girls who would have liked to date Bick, and also all the guys who didn't want to watch the two of them making out at the lunch table.

People hated Meghan. She was the girl you love to hate--not because she does anything mean or spiteful, but because she's naturally gorgeous, extremely oblivious, and completely boy-oriented. Because she licks her lips when she talks to guys, and pouts cutely, and all the guys stare at her like they can't pull their eyes away.

But I don't hate her now. She doesn't even bug me anymore. And she was lost on the first day of school junior year, because Bick had left for Harvard the week before.

So Meghan and I were standing in front of the mail cubbies when we heard a crew of newly minted senior girls discussing Kim's party and what happened. Then we heard more from the guys who sat behind us in American Literature, and then from a girl who is on the swim team with me. By the end of first period it was clear that Nora's boobs were going to be the major focus of nearly every conversation for the rest of the day.

Because Nora is stacked.

Really stacked.

She is just not a small girl.

2 Yes, only one boob. Long story.

1 Nora was the only one of my old foursome (her, me, Cricket and Kim) who had never yet experienced some social or bodily horror related to taking her top off. See The Boy Book entry, above.


From the Hardcover edition.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Boy Book by E. Lockhart Copyright © 2006 by E. Lockhart. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating 4
( 50 )

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 10, 2009

    Lovable

    As I stepped into Ruby's world I found myself being amazed each and every step of the way. The story truly depicts the girl world with its ups and downs. You live Ruby's emotions as if they were ones own. All the boys in the story are like the many we know in our personal life like: the jock, the band geek, the rocker, the stud, the nerd, and the normal guy. Ruby lets the reader see and comprehend what girls do when the are mad and alone. I laughed endlessly because Ruby did the weirdest things. This book is truly amazing!!!!!!!!!!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Posted September 23, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    Sweetness

    I loved The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book did not disappoint. Ruby is so fun and relate-able. I love the footnotes and exerts from The Boy Book. It is such a cute, fun book. Every girl should read it!

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 10, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    Praise for E. Lockhart!! She finally captures the spirit of a teen in pain!!!

    The boy book is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. It tells fhe story of how young Ruby faces her problems in high school. The difference with this book is Ruby is on the other side of the drama, and her former best friend is the one spreading rumors about her. Ruby ends up having to go to a therapist who encourages Ruby to talk about her problems,and man she has a lot of them. Well, in the end she doesn't end up with the fantasy life, or anywhere close to it, but she really captures the spirit of a real life teen with relevant problems. This book was fun to read from cover to cover and I had a very hard time ever setting it down until I was completely finished with it!!!

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Posted December 12, 2011

    OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Book title and author: The Boy Book written by: E. Lockhart
    Title of review: The Boy Book
    Number of stars (1 to 5): 4
    I loved The Boy Book by: E. Lochhart. It¿s the perfect book for you. This book has a lot of big words and talks about boys who just love girls boobs. This book will totally catch ur attention. So if you are boy or girl crazy then this book is meant for you. So if you love relationships oh and (boobs) then STOP doing whatever you are doing and go get this book.
    In this book its about boys who are crazy over girls. There are 7 characters names are: Kim, Cricket, Nora, Noel, Meghan, Dr. Z, and of course Jackson. There are 13 chapters which are not that long. This book is so AWESOME!!!!! Well its about these kids who are the ages of 12 and 13. And well Kim was going to Tokyo, for a exchange program. And Meghan is the one who does not talk much. She wont talk to Kim or even Cricket.
    The Boy Book is the second book of a series. So far there are 2 books written by E. Lockhart well those books are called The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book. It¿s a really awesome series. But you might want to start with the first book. So lets hope E. Lockhart wrights more books in this series. It is proven that The Boy Book is the best so far out of the series.
    The Boy Book is a really good book. I loved reading it. I jus couldn¿t get enough on it. It was so good that I didn¿t even want to put it down. You should really read The Boy Book.
    I give this book 5 stars.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Posted October 26, 2008

    more from this reviewer

    Reviewed by Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius" for TeensReadToo.com

    In this sequel to THE BOYFRIEND LIST, we get to catch up on the life of Ruby Oliver, who last year had quite a time living down the infamous xeroxed list that made its way through her high school. Now in possession of a driver's license, a mission known as the [...]Rescue Squad, a former best friend who is spending a semester in Tokyo, a shrink named Doctor Z who still befuddles her, and a job at the Woodland Park Zoo, Ruby feels like her life just might be getting back on track. Maybe. Possibly. Sort of.

    She's once again working on The Boy Book, a work-in-progress guide to life and boys that she started long ago with Kim (the once best friend), Cricket (another former friend), and Nora (still a kind of friend). Filled with such facts as "The Care and Ownership of [....]," "Levels of Boyfriends," and "Why You Want the Guy You Can't Have," The Boy Book was once a joint effort. Now, it's simply something that Ruby feels the need to add to as her life gets--if it's even possible--more complicated.

    As she becomes better friends with Noel, she wonders if she's got a crush on him. Or, in fact, does Noel have a crush on her? And what about Angelo, who is quite a good scammer, but also happens to be the son of her mother's best friend? Even more importantly, what should she do about Jackson, who was once her boyfriend but is now in love with Kim? Ever since she saw him hugging on another girl at the zoo, Ruby has been plagued with indecision about whether or not to tell Kim. After all, Kim was once her best friend, and she deserves to know what her boyfriend is doing while she's studying away in Japan. On the other hand, they're no longer friends, and Ruby knows that there's a part of her who only wants to hurt Kim the way she was hurt in the past.

    As Ruby deals with the continuing trials and tribulations of high school, crushes, and panic attacks, she comes to the realization that she just might really be better off without Jackson. And although she misses Kim, she now has new friends who round out her life and keep it interesting. The Boy Book has served its purpose, and Ruby knows now that nothing in life is constant. Knowing and understanding that is, after all, what makes girls smarter than boys.

    THE BOY BOOK is the perfect follow up to THE BOYFRIEND LIST, and I'm sad to see the end of Ruby Oliver. Unless Ms. Lockhart plans to let us in on The Girl Book, which would be a major treat.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Anonymous

    Posted October 25, 2008

    confusing

    i am 11 years old and i started reading the boy book. i found the first few pages confusing with the settings, characters, and topic. i will have to wait a few months before i attempt to read this book again.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 29, 2008

    Great Book A Must Read

    The Boy Book By e. Lockhart is a great book. It relates so much to the daily relations of the real teen-age life. The book is so funny yet down to earth.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Anonymous

    Posted March 4, 2008

    Funny and awesome!!

    This book is so much like real life. You can relate to all the characters and understand what they are going through. This book is soooooo hilarious!! I laugh at almost every single page. Please read this book!!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Anonymous

    Posted May 11, 2007

    the boy book

    This book was one of the best books i've read in a long time. It had so much to do with real highschool life. The main character wrote a 'boy book' and kept all of her thoughts for surviving highschool in there, along with some of her best friends. It talked about all of her boyfriends and past relationships and all of the drama going on with her friends. It's just a great book that's hard to put down. I would recommend this book to someone who likes reading funny, but realistic stories in a heart beat!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Anonymous

    Posted October 18, 2006

    Good .....

    i looved the first one ... this one was funny but not as good as the first one.. i did not like the ending i feel like she didnt end it right. but, overall it was a good read

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Anonymous

    Posted August 25, 2006

    Courtesy of Teens Read Too

    In this sequel to THE BOYFRIEND LIST, we get to catch up on the life of Ruby Oliver, who last year had quite a time living down the infamous xeroxed list that made its way through her high school. Now in possession of a driver's license, a mission known as the Hooter Rescue Squad, a former best friend who is spending a semester in Tokyo, a shrink named Doctor Z who still befuddles her, and a job at the Woodland Park Zoo, Ruby feels like her life just might be getting back on track. Maybe. Possibly. Sort of. She's once again working on The Boy Book, a work-in-progress guide to life and boys that she started long ago with Kim (the once best friend), Cricket (another former friend), and Nora (still a kind of friend). Filled with such facts as 'The Care and Ownership of Boobs,' 'Levels of Boyfriends,' and 'Why You Want the Guy You Can't Have,' The Boy Book was once a joint effort. Now, it's simply something that Ruby feels the need to add to as her life gets--if it's even possible--more complicated. As she becomes better friends with Noel, she wonders if she's got a crush on him. Or, in fact, does Noel have a crush on her? And what about Angelo, who is quite a good scammer, but also happens to be the son of her mother's best friend? Even more importantly, what should she do about Jackson, who was once her boyfriend but is now in love with Kim? Ever since she saw him hugging on another girl at the zoo, Ruby has been plagued with indecision about whether or not to tell Kim. After all, Kim was once her best friend, and she deserves to know what her boyfriend is doing while she's studying away in Japan. On the other hand, they're no longer friends, and Ruby knows that there's a part of her who only wants to hurt Kim the way she was hurt in the past. As Ruby deals with the continuing trials and tribulations of high school, crushes, and panic attacks, she comes to the realization that she just might really be better off without Jackson. And although she misses Kim, she now has new friends who round out her life and keep it interesting. The Boy Book has served its purpose, and Ruby knows now that nothing in life is constant. Knowing and understanding that is, after all, what makes girls smarter than boys. THE BOY BOOK is the perfect follow up to THE BOYFRIEND LIST, and I'm sad to see the end of Ruby Oliver. Unless Ms. Lockhart plans to let us in on The Girl Book, which would be a major treat.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
  • Anonymous

    Posted August 27, 2006

    Good Sequel

    I got the uneditted version of this, and I have to say that it was pretty good, not as good as the first but close enough. Things start to work a little better for Ruby in this novel, but I got a little annoyed with her and all the boys. It also felt like the ending had hung, and hadn't ended properly. I hope there's another Ruby Oliver book!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  No   Report this review
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    Posted October 11, 2009

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    Posted November 28, 2009

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    Posted March 26, 2010

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    Posted June 23, 2011

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    Posted February 6, 2012

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    Posted December 22, 2010

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    Posted November 24, 2010

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