Alt Ed

by Catherine Atkins Narrated by Johanna Parker

Overview

Award-winning author Catherine Atkins unveils the complex lives of today's teens in a story told through the raw, uncensored voices of its young characters. Shy, fat Susan Calloway knows she has nothing in common with the five other students in the afterschool group counseling sessions she's forced to attend to avoid expulsion. But as Susan and the others verbally attack each other and defend their own viewpoints each week, they begin to understand that none of their lives are as simple and straightforward as they appear on the surface.

Editorial Reviews

Diane Tuccillo

Susan Callahan is overweight and constantly tormented at Wayne High. When she witnesses Brendan, a gay classmate who has been subjected to similar treatment, trashing the prized truck of a campus bully, she eggs him on.  Both are caught, and Susan shares the blame. They find themselves in required after-school counseling with four other teens in trouble. Kyle, the owner of the truck; Randy, a handsome jock; Amber, a girl with a bad reputation and a soft heart; and Tracee, a cheerleader with religious convictions. Susan is terrified to participate, and the others balk.  Guidance counselor-instructor Mr. Duffy, however, encourages them to open up, allowing extremely frank and sometimes coarse discussions, revelations, and language. Amber, for example, divulges her drunken party experience being sexually used by multiple boys. There are no group ground rules except to keep class confidentiality. Eventually, the group reveals the reasons they were forced to attend the class, and they change for the better. Susan decides to dress more attractively, get exercise and lose some weight, become friends with Brendan, and stand up for herself. She reaches out to her distant father, a coach at the high school, and her older brother who has been embarrassed by her, and comes to terms with her mother’s death.

Susan’s blossoming self-esteem is reminiscent of Bobby’s in Robert Lipstyte’s One Fat Summer (Harper & Row, 1977) and Colie’s in Sarah Dressen’s Keeping the Moon (Viking, 1999/VOYA December 1999). As in those books, skilled writing, on-target dialogue, and sharply drawn characters bring this thought-provoking story to life.     -VOYA

Publishers Weekly

"Carefully nuanced connections between characters plus insight into the adolescent ability to use low self-esteem as a cruel weapon catapults this novel of troubled teens well above the familiarity of its trappings," said PW in a starred review. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Susan Callaway is a painfully self-conscious sophomore at Wayne High. Constantly teased about her weight, she has no friends. Her longtime nemesis, Kale Krasner, is a slow-witted bully whom she suspects is behind the harassing phone calls she's been getting. When she meets openly gay Brendan Slater in the school library, she makes friends with this fellow outcast, and together they surreptitiously deface Kale's pickup truck. This act of vandalism lands them both in a new 12-week, after-school group led by the head guidance counselor and designed as an alternative to expulsion for six students with serious infractions. Meeting in a stuffy trailer, the Alt Ed group, bound by confidentiality, also includes a football player, a popular cheerleader, a tough girl, and Kale. In short chapters, these teens begin to talk, but honesty and trust come hard in a group divided by social status, homophobia, ugly rumors, sexism, and intolerance, and it is sometimes hard to differentiate personalities with so much heated dialogue. With Alt Ed discussions so frank, argumentative, and sometimes downright rude, Mr. Duffy gently tempers the tone, and the sharing of feelings gradually helps to build respect and understanding among members. When the group ends, all six teens are stronger-even Kale shows signs of rehabilitation. Although the novel features the popular themes of adolescent self-acceptance and belonging, Atkins's attempt to address so many teen issues feels diffuse and contrived and doesn't fully succeed.-Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Atkins (When Jeff Comes Home, 2002) offers an anxious and tender story, excellently written on a theme of peer acceptance. Susan leads a tense and lonely daily existence. Her distant father has been especially absent since her mother died, and her brother is usually downright mean. Even more painful are daily harassments from Susan’s classmates (because she is fat) and anonymous, cruelly mocking phone calls. When Susan gets in trouble, she is placed in a "class" with five other students avoiding expulsion. Their lives turn out to be interwoven in more ways than is obvious, and because each character is written with subtle levels of complexity, what could have been a collection of stereotypes is instead a group of highly nuanced and thought-provoking individuals. Susan tentatively makes friends with Brendan, a gay boy who is also subject to peer torment, tries to figure out how to change her treatment at the hands of the world, and struggles to make emotional contact with her father. The only flaw: as Susan begins to show little sseedlings of confidence, she begins to lose weight, a stale and disheartening cultural stereotype. Otherwise, a complex and stellar work. (Fiction. YA)

From the Publisher

"Carefully nuanced connections between characters plus insight into the adolescent ability to use low self-esteem as a cruel weapon catapults Atkins's novel of troubled teens well above the familiarity of its trappings.  Each of Atkins's characters emerges, fully formed from these pages."—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170701834
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	01/02/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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