"Into the Wild Nerd Yonder--my life on the dork side"

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder
--my life on the dork side.
By: Julie Halpern


"So my final nights of summer were wasted with mediocrity and cigarettes. Barrett drove us to Denny's, Bizza acted like Bizza, and, as usual, her magical Bizzabilities charmed the pants off of them. Not literally, of course. The conversations turned away from music and moved to food, TV, movies--anything that Bizza deemed worthy of chatter. As the days went by, my skirts got smokier, and the weeping willow tree house got lonelier. Thank god, the summer is just about over. Yeah, I used to like the first day of school. Until my best friends decided to turn punk."

That is the last paragraph of the first chapter and I honestly didn't need anymore convincing that this book was going to be a winner. It is humorous, it is extremely clever, it is touching and it has just enough teenage angst to make for a great book.

Halpren completely got in touch with her inner teenage nerd and brought her to life in the form of Jessie, a high school girl who enjoys sewing her own skirts and is a self-proclaimed mathlete. She is accessible, she is perfectly enjoyable. Jessie's story takes her on an interesting adventure through finding herself, her place in high school (because EVERYONE has their place in HS), and discovering that who your friends were in JR high are not necessarily going to be your friends in HS. Jessie finds that being who she wants to be is more important than who her friends want her to be.

I laughed, I didn't cry, but I did enjoy this book with every ounce of me. In so many ways, this book is perfect. Even though this book is classified as Young Adult (YA), I do not care what age you are or what your popularity status or friend number was in HS, you will enjoy this book.
TWO thumbs up.