Out of Order
-
- $3.99
-
- $3.99
Publisher Description
Colt's perfect life crumbles when his girlfriend breaks up with him and looming academic ineligibility threatens his baseball career. For a guy who gets by on his good looks and talent with a bat, Colt knows that he could be facing his toughest challenge ever.
Just as she did in her acclaimed novel Damage, author A. M. Jenkins strikes to the heart of an outwardly confident teenager to expose surprising sensitivity, uncertainty, and humor within.
o Jenkins successfully tackles such common young adult themes as peer pressure and self esteem by addressing them through an inquisitive and likeable character to whom teens will easily relate.
o Out Of Order will resonate with girls and boys, reluctant and avid readers.
Ages 12 +
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
There is redemption and growth at the end of Jenkins's (Damage; Breaking Boxes) brittle high school tale but whether readers will want to spend a couple hundred pages with the loutish narrator is another matter. Sophomore Colt Trammel cares for only two things: baseball, at which he excels, and Grace, the girl he has always loved. To his teachers and most of his classmates (and probably readers as well), Colt is a stereotypical dumb jock ("One of the few things I've always liked about school is how everybody knows where they fit.... I belong at the top, and everybody knows it"); he, like nearly all the other characters, is recognizable more from teen films than from real life. When his mother threatens to keep him from playing baseball unless he brings up his grades, he turns for help to green-haired new girl Corinne, a dowdy outcast who loves poetry and shops at thrift stores (this would be the Molly Ringwald/Oddball Girl Who Is Really Adorable Once You Get to Know Her archetype). It is Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias" that effects the easily anticipated change in Colt, prompting him to wonder what people will remember about him when he is gone. The book's last few pages are poignant including a poem by Corinne that casts Colt in a more favorable light but it is likely a case of too little, too late. Ages 14-up.
Customer Reviews
Amazing
An absolute, amazing book. I am 15 years old (male), freshman in high school and this book took me three days to read. It was so engaging and I never wanted to stop reading it. A.M Jenkins hit the head on the nail when it comes to portraying the life of a high school student. Absolutely correct on everything, even every stereotype that lingers around in every high school. Amazing book, recommend this to any teen 14-16 (male). Great book.