Boy Proof

Boy Proof
by Cecil Castellucci
Candlewick Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
2005
ISBN: 0763627968Plot Summary:
Egg is a loner: although she's surrounded by other science-fiction fan geeks, comic book lovers, and Hollywood kids, she still can't shake the feeling that it's her against the world. Her mother doesn't get her, her dad only loves his special effects gear, the kids at school with the same interests as hers just bore her. Then, suddenly, Max Carter arrives: a new kid who gets along with everyone, is super smart, and likes everything she likes.
Egg keeps her distance, and the more Max tries to befriend her, the more she pushes him away. Him and everybody else.
Critical Evaluation:
Boy Proof moves quickly, Egg's days and nights passing according to the slights she accumulates. The moments are measured in a diaristic fashion---each chapter beginning with the location and time of day. Experiences that take place online are noted as well as those at school, home, and the comic book shop. The tale is told through Egg's voice, so the moments she is describing are relentlessly solitary, self-pitying, and alienating. The tone is not grating, however, and instead its relentlessness works to mirror the heightened emotions Egg is experiencing.
Reader's Annotation:
Egg's not sure why she hates everyone, she just does. But after awhile, her fatigue of everyone else just becomes fatigue with herself. Can Egg get over herself and find her own way?
Author Info:
Cecil Castellucci is an author of young adult novels and comic books, most notably Boy Proof and The PLAIN Janes. Upcoming in 2009 are a bunch of short stories in The Eternal Kiss, Sideshow and Interfictions 2 and the anthology, which she co-edited, Geektastic.
Genre:
YA fiction/ Romance
Booktalking Ideas:
*Is Egg a sympathetic narrator or a pain in the ass?
*Can Egg finally figure out how to be happy?
*Do her friends and family really "see" her? Or is she as invisible as she believes?
Reader Level/ Interest Age:
Marketed as a YA romance, but its wonderfully descriptive emotional states and rhythms make it enjoyable for any reader interested in emotional pain and the possibility of change.
Challenges:
Themes are emotionally mature, yet situations are never risque or explicit.
Why Include?:
A wise friend recommended it, and she's never been wrong so far...