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book coverBig Mouth & Ugly Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

New York: HarperTempest, 2002

266 pages

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Dust Jacket Blurb

Matt Donaghy has always been a Big Mouth but it's never gotten him into trouble—until one day when two detectives escort him out of class for questioning. Matt has been accused of threatening to blow up Rocky River High School.

Ursula Riggs has always been an Ugly Girl. A loner with fierce, staring eyes, Ursula has no time for petty high school stuff like friends and dating—or at least that's what she tells herself. Ursula is content with minding her own business. And she doesn't even really know Matt Donaghy.

But Ursula is the only person who knows what Matt really said that day . . . and she is the only one who can help him.

In her first novel for young adults, acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates has created a provocative and unflinching story of friendship and family, and of loyalty and betrayal.

Excerpt

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Edwin Elmer,
Mourning Picture

Life consists of facts, and facts are of two kinds: Boring and Crucial.

I figured this out for myself in the eighth grade. Wish I could patent it!

A Boring Fact is virtually any fact that doesn't concern you. Or it's just trivial, a nothing fact. (Like the annual rainfall in, let's say, Bolivia. Crucial to the Bolivians, but Boring to everyone else.)

I know the Crucial Facts of Ugly Girl's life are Boring Facts to others. Yet, to Ugly Girl, they are Crucial.

There's one test of a Crucial Fact: It hurts.

Reviews

  • Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2002, pp. 575-576
  • Publishers Weekly, April 22, 2002, p. 71
  • School Library Journal, May 2002, p. 158
  • Buffalo News, May 19, 2002, p. F7
  • New York Times Book Review, May 19, 2002, p. 32
  • Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, June 2002, p. 377
  • Atlanta Journal and Constitution, June 2, 2002, sec. @issue, p. 5E
  • San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, June 2, 2002, p. M5
  • Washington Post Book World, June 23, 2002, p. T11
  • Sydney Morning Herald, February 1, 2003, Books, p. 3

Awards

Los Angeles Times Book Prize: finalist

A Guide to Teaching JCO's Young Adult Literature

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Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/children/bigmouth.html

  
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  University of San Francisco • Educating Minds and Hearts to Change the World last modified: 2009-07-09 09:26:24.0