06 Jul / Zen and the Art of Faking It by Jordan Sonnenblick
With a father in jail and a mother trying hard to keep her family together, San Lee’s peripatetic home life is anything but zen. He’s entering yet another new school as an outside eighth-grader – and moving from big town Houston to small-town Pennsylvania isn’t exactly his idea of fun.
When he answers a few too many questions correctly in his new social studies class (he did just have ancient religions at his last school), suddenly, San becomes the local Zen Master … and most unlikely school hero to boot. Being a Chinese adoptee (of white parents) even helps to make him look the part.
San’s antics, especially in trying to get the girl (whose own mother/daughter travails are especially touching), are laugh-out-loud funny. Finally adding some truth to his runaway new life, however, is not without some growing pains. Jordan Sonnenblick captures the complications of teenage angst with a just-right blend of too-silly lightness and drama-queen gravitas.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2007
this was a hilarious book! i liked it a lot. we listened to the audiobook, and the reader was very good, as well.
loved the book – it’s on my must read list.
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