It's Kind of a Funny Story

By Ned Vizzini, this is our first book club read for the school year. Copies available in the library for checkout.

Hanging out with his best friend Aaron is Craig's favorite thing to do - it helps him get through the week of intense study. Craig is trying get accepted to one of the most prestigious high schools in New York. Everything he does for an entire year is focused on getting himself in to the school, and his every waking moment is spent studying flash cards and test questions to prepare himself. He finally triumphs, with a perfect score of 800. The acceptance letter is the culmination of a year's hard work and determination.

Then school starts in the fall, and Craig feels himself slipping into a vortex overloaded with school work and pressure. He can't keep much food down, what with the puking and all, and he can't seem to get much sleep, either. Then, Aaron makes a play for Nia, the girl Craig really likes, and Craig feels his world start spiraling out of control. There's just so much responsibility and pressure to join clubs, answer emails from teachers, do monumental piles of homework, excel at everything. And that isn't going to be easy, because it turns out that practically every kid at the school got a perfect score on the entrance exam. An 85 on his first math test is accompanied by a small frowny face drawn by the teacher of his 'bonehead' math class. Turns out everyone else is at least a year ahead of Craig in every subject. 93 just isn't going to cut it any more.

Harry Potter 7

Love it? Hated it? Want more? Read it so fast I was done in less than a day, couldn't wait to find out what had happened to my literary friends. My big question now is, what happened to them all afterwords? I want to know about their lives, their careers, the rest of the Order of the Phoenix!