bigmouth

Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, by Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 0-06-623756-4 c2002 266 pages R.L. 5.1 Points-8

Good sections to read aloud: -first few paragraphs on page 3...then skip to page 7 and finish it out....this will help us gain an understanding that something is terribly wrong, and Matt is involved.

Summary: When sixteen-year-old Matt is falsely accused of threatening to blow up his high school and his friends turn against him, an unlikely classmate comes to his aid, Ursula (aka...ugly girl). Matt DID joke about blowing up the high school, but never actually meant it, but now, he is in a world of trouble. Even after he is cleared to go back to school, his reputation is tattered, as is his family’s, and it is going to be extremely hard to earn it back, but....does Matt really want to? Are these people really his friends?

YA Fiction--high schools; friendship; peer pressure; law enforcement

©Jennifer Lang - WDMS - 2003