FOR THIS BOOK, I spent a year back in high school. Well, not really. I spent a few days a week with students during their year of high school.

A teacher friend at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, in downtown Chicago, introduced me to the students.  The students – six seniors and two juniors – were kind enough to let me follow them around with a notebook.  We talked about upcoming games, drama with friends, pregnancy scares, and college applications. Their stories made the book what it is: part documentary, part sketchbook, part something else. The book is also a journal of the day-to-day life of a high school, from Phys Ed to prom.  Lastly, this being Chicago, it’s a story about weather.

I have a great deal of appreciation for the students’ openness in sharing their lives with me.  I had fun writing this book (though I still have trouble saying the title!).  Mostly, though, I loved the reporting – going to football games, homecoming dances, or just talking with a student in the halls after English class.

ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool:
A Year in an American High School

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REVIEWS

Publisher’s Weekly 2.22.08
STARRED REVIEW
"Cooper, known for his savvy picture books (Beach, A Good Night Walk) and his parenting memoir, Crawling, trains his sights on teens with this perceptive documentary account... the considerable strengths of the work come from Cooper's genius for observation and confident refusal to dramatize what he finds."

Chicago Sun-Times 7.06.08
"At one time or another most of us have wished we could be a fly on the wall - a silent, virtually invisible observer to worlds we normally have no access to. This is the role author Elisha Cooper plays in his wonder of a book, ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool."

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Published by:
Dial Books 2008
us.penguingroup.com
ISBN 978-0-8037-3169-1
$17.99

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