Enjoyable glimpse of life in Smithers, BC, through the eyes of dysfunctional teenager Alice MacLeod and her family. ( )

Bad cover. My library has it shelved as juvenile - which, come on, that's what it looks like. But the frequent references to alcohol and drug use, the dysfunction masquerading as humor, the brawling in the streets (or, in one case, by the mom in a parking lot) that the cops can't stop being treated as if almost normal, just drove me nuts.

I'd have stopped at the first YA content, a reference to night shift workers smoking hash on their break, but I'm reading it for the Children's Books Group (yes, that's right, for Children's Books) and so I finished. I must say though, that it got really hard when the family got a computer and Alice discovered porn. She says I'm only 15; I shouldn't have to see this stuff [on The Butt Page] and then she proceeds to describe what she's seeing. Am I the only one who doesn't want my 13 yo reading that chapter?

I tried to read it as if I knew all along it was YA, not Juv, but that didn't help. If you like Jerry Springer and/or David Sedaris you might like this. I found no character sympathetic, no crises funny, nothing illuminating or provocative... nothing to make me feel like my time and energy was well-spent." ( )

A Confederacy of Dunces for the YA set. A homeschooled teenager writes about trying to integrate into society. Fortunately for the reader, she is as self-absorbed, selfish and out-of-touch with reality as could be hoped. Very amusing. ( )

Very funny. ( )

Kirkus says “comedy rules in Juby's satirical, laugh-out-loud debut about a wacky home-schooled teenager who decides to try public high school.” Alice whose brief debut at public school in first grade ended shortly after finding out school children weren’t particularly impressed by first graders dressed as hobbits. When we come along and meet fifteen year old Alice, she is trying high school for the first time and being bullied again by the very same bully from her past. Alice’s snarky journal entries cover everyone and everything as this Canadian teenager sets and meets her life goals all the while avoiding being flattened by arch nemesis Linda. --SJ Cournoyer