Ten Miles Past Normal
by Frances O'Roark Dowell
Atheneum (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division)
2011
211 pages
Fresh, offbeat, and funny, Ten Miles Past Normal will have readers and librarians enthralled. This book may be picked by savvy state library associations as the best of 2011.
Janie Gorman doesn't want to be known as the Goat Girl, but it's hard to shake that name when she sometimes smells of goat poop and other rich farm smells. Living on a small goat farm with her pseudo-hippy parents and "getting back to nature" blogger mother, and making natural goat cheese sounded like fun when Janie was nine; now that she's in high school, being awakened at dawn by an industrious rooster and feeding goats before school is not as much fun as she had once thought it would be.
Janie has yet to find her high school niche; she longs for a place to fit in. When she is offered bass guitar lessons by a boy named Monster, she gives it a try. The funny thing is, Janie was born to play the bass! Now, she's one of the "cool" Jam Band kids.
The Goat Girl is now the Jam Band bass girl. Ten Miles Past Normal is a fun read and a real page turner. It's nice to see that normal girls living normal lives can be an interesting read for teens--girls don't have to have super-powers or paranormal boyfriends to be entertaining.
Highly, highly recommended grades 7-up.
No language, no sex.
FTC Required Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.
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