In Zanesville

The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of In Zanesville is a late bloomer. She is used to flying under the radar-a sidekick, a third wheel, a marching band dropout, a disastrous babysitter, the kind of girl whose Eureka moment is the discovery that "fudge" can't be said with an English accent.

Luckily, she has a best friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed, and character is forged.

In time, their friendship is tested -- by their families' claims on them, by a clique of popular girls who stumble upon them as if they were found objects, and by the first, startling, subversive intimations of womanhood.

With dry wit and piercing observation, Jo Ann Beard shows us that in the seemingly quiet streets of America's innumerable Zanesvilles is a world of wonders, and that within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant and unforgettable.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 04/03/2012
ISBN: 9780316125277
Pages: 289
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.90d
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 151637 / In Zanesville
Reading Level: 5.8 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 12