By Chris Miller
Coquitlam Public Library
Stuck in class, staring out rain-spattered windows at gray clouds and people wearing toques and winter coats, a teenager’s thoughts in mid-winter naturally turn to sunshine, parties and scantily clad hotties. Luckily for teens, libraries take escapist fantasies seriously, and stock books to aid and abet them.
In Swim the Fly by Don Calame, swim team buddies Matt, Sean and Coop set themselves a goal every summer, such as collecting a thousand golf balls from a local course, or riding their bikes to a nearby lake to skinny dip. This year, they decide they each need to see a girl naked – in the flesh – before the end of the summer. Working together, they come up with a series of sneaky plans, all of which backfire, some of them disastrously.
Meanwhile, rail-thin Matt is training to swim the butterfly, the most difficult stroke at the end-of-summer swim meet, in an attempt to impress Kelly, his sexy new teammate. He just hopes that he doesn’t drown.
In Calame’s uproarious debut, you’ll read about Matt suffering the effects of an accidentally ingested laxative, Sean’s sister walking in on the boys while they’re trying on her clothes, Matt’s Grandpa Arlo talking about his “spanky hanky,” Coop declaring national “That’s What She Said” Day, and the loser of their three-person ping pong tournament drinking a barf-inducing cup of chocolate milk and Clamato as punishment.
The sometimes rude, scatological humour may remind you of a Judd Apatow movie, but at its heart, this is a sweet story about three guys who are clueless about girls, but desperately want to find out everything they can. Matt, Sean and Coop’s banter is spot on, and Calame delineates a wonderful supporting cast including Matt’s widow-chasing grandpa and Valerie, the girl Matt almost overlooks.
In Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty by Jody Gehrman, 16-year-old Geena envisions spending her summer lounging on a deck with her best friend Amber and her cousin Hero, wearing bikinis, painting one another’s toenails and sipping iced mochas. But sparks fly when earthy Amber, a trailer park girl, meets prissy Hero, a preppy private schooler. With her friends at each other’s throats, Geena tries to play peacemaker, but guys keep getting in the way. First there’s Claudio, a romantic Italian boy who steals Hero’s heart. Then there’s school valedictorian John Jamieson, a smooth, shallow, sinister schemer who wants Hero, too, and will do anything to get her. Meanwhile, Geena, a tough, independent skater girl, starts getting light-headed and nervous around Ben, her arch-rival at school since time immemorial.
Is love in the air in California’s wine country? Or maybe it’s something in the coffee that Amber and Geena serve at the Triple Shot Betty’s espresso stand, where everyone seems to go sooner or later.
In this frothy adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Gehrman weaves a dizzying plot featuring dopey surfer dudes, drive-through debacles, and a dastardly plot to ruin a good girl’s reputation. Full of love, laughs and lattes, but with no Elizabethan language, Gehrman’s book is a perfect diversion to drive away your winter blahs.
The back cover for Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford reads: “WARNING: This book contains lewd humor, underage drinking, illicit fantasizing, and very bad decision-making.” True on all counts.
Will Carter is an ADD teen who spaces out when he’s in class, while he’s lining up field goals in football practice, when he’s talking with girls – in short, anytime he should be concentrating. A high school freshman, he dates a nice girl named Abby for a while before things go badly. Moments after professing his love for Abby, he cluelessly agrees to attend homecoming with Amber Lee, the girl he’s always been hot for. But Amber dumps Carter after using him to get a ride to the dance. Persona non grata with Amber, Abby and most girls at school, Carter hangs out with his buddies and tries to figure out who how to survive the remaining three years plus of high school. He goes to drinking parties (where he secretly sips Mountain Dew out of recycled beer bottles), gets chased by cops, headbutts his friend EJ’s naked butt, almost rams his house while driving a friend’s truck without a license, and stumbles through various sporting seasons and tryouts before discovering something he truly loves: musical theatre. Too bad he can’t admit it in front of his friends.
Crawford does an excellent job of conveying Carter’s frequently addled mindset, as the teen’s thoughts misfire and meander onto hilarious tangents. At times, you may cringe on behalf of Carter and his attempts to be gangsta, but by the end, you should smile and feel a sense of relief as the endearing narrator starts to leave his doofus-ness behind.
Featuring mature content and language, these books are best for teens in Grades 9 and up.
