Ron Koertge's Stoner & Spaz

Another great book for people looking for less girly YA fiction is Stoner & Spaz, by Ron Koertge

Ben's a loner, a preppy, a movie freak. Oh yeah. And he's got CP. Not that it's affected his brain, no, he's in there all right, but cerebral palsy makes him a pretty obviously 'invisible guy' at school. He's his high school's resident spaz - sometimes his foot just drags, sometimes his leg doesn't hold him up. Sometimes his bad arm shakes a bit. And sometimes not.

Black humor is the best friend of a kid whose parent's bailed on him and left him with his rigid and humorless grandmother, a prisoner in a body which will not be bothered with listening to him. This guy is funny, but few people get close enough to know it. And he's not going to push open the walls of his life and get into anyone's face. He's disabled. He knows the score.

Enter Colleen, school stoner, who doesn't know any score because she's usually too spaced to be in the game. And she completely doesn't care. She runs roughshod all over Ben's walls, accuses him, insults him, and borrows money which she never pays back. She brings him out of himself, occasionally abandoning him when he's halfway out of his shell, but in her quirky way, lending him the strength to get himself the rest of the way out.

Any relationship between the two of them is a train wreck waiting to happen. Which is why they mess around with it. Colleen's a gambler, after all. And Ben is just ecstatic that someone is willing to touch him, in his self-perceived ugliness.

Is that enough of a hook to keep you reading? It was for me, and I think Koertge does an incredible job with this book opening up topics like disability, class issues, and more. The issuesin the book are real; Colleen is indeed a 'stoner,' and drug addiction is rightly depicted as serious stuff. Koertge doesn't give in to the Disney vibe and make everything turn out all right (whatever 'right' may be). This book may not end the way you want it to, but it still will give you a little mental "high five" of at least someone getting out of high school with their head intact.

Read it? Loved it? Going to the library now so you'll have something to say about it? Good.