“Egghead” by Caroline Pignat

Will Reid wears fake turtlenecks, is obsessed by his ant farm project, and is lousy at gym.  He’s the perfect target for Shane, the Grade 9 bully. Katie has been Will’s friend in elementary school, but defending him in the high school comes at an unforeseen cost – she dreads the rumours that link them in a boyfriend/girlfriend way she’s never considered and the unpopularity that may come with it.  Devan is Shane’s best friend although he has doubts about mindlessly backing up each nasty attack of Shane’s. Together the three young teens are struggling to find their way out of one of the classic dilemmas of life: how not to be a bystander to bullying, how to stand up for your friends, and how to deal with sometimes all consuming rage.

Each character takes a turn at telling the story — through Will, wrapped up in the world of his single-parent father and his own eccentric preoccupations; through the clear-eyed accounts of Katie, wrestling with her own private demons; and in the sensitive narrative of the slowly awakening Devan, who comes to notice Katie as a spunky, attractive girl whom he’d like to know better but fears she will never be interested with friends like his.

Being a military teen means that you might move more than most, but even if you don’t your friends may and you are often in the situation of having to look at who your friends are and whether or they do things that you can live with.

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Filed under: Military Family Support - Tips from the 101 Tips books, Teen Tips, Tips for Educators and Deployment Support Workers Tagged: | bullying, bystander, Caroline Pignat, Egghead, family, fiction, read, teen