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Gert Garibaldi's Rants and Raves: One Butt Cheek at a Time Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDelacorte Press
- Publication dateNovember 13, 2007
- Reading age14 years and up
- Grade level9 and up
- File size516 KB
Editorial Reviews
Review
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
From the Author
The second in the series FROM BUTT TO BOOTY will be out this winter, December 9, 2008 and continues Gert's sophomore year! She gets into even more trouble with boys, school and her family.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Yuck. Has that ever happened in real life? Uh, no. Anyway, Adam likes Tim, so it would never work. I'm a girl, he's a boy, we both like boys, you get the idea.
And no, we're not those two small-town teens who move to the big city to find ourselves at the bottom of a beer can, with an MTV sound track and tons of making out with strangers. We don't fit here, but honestly, can we fit anywhere? I don't know yet. I'll keep you posted.
Tangent: sorry.
The point is, I like Tim's twin brother, Lucas. Lucas is in third-period English with me. He's a junior, but I'm a Brain sophomore, so it evens out. We don't really know each other. And he's tight with the in crowd, which means the people he talks to are not the same people I talk to. I mean, if I'm honest, Tim and I have many more conversations than me and Lucas. I say hi in the halls and, if Lucas isn't busy with someone else, he sometimes says hi back. But I'm optimistic. It's only a matter of time before he figures out we're perfect for each other.
English isn't the most romantic place to have a crush. It's not drama, where you can hide in dark costume closets, or bio, where you can snuggle around the Bunsen burner.
You know what I'm talking about.
All you need to know about Mr. Slater's English class is summed up with one visual. He stands at the board, back to the class, and twitches his butt muscles.
One cheek. The other cheek.
Back and forth.
Left and right.
Right and left.
The entire lecture, the entire fifty-eight minutes, is him talking and twitching and all of us trying not to watch the grotesque display. It's a bit like the cobra and the mongoose, although not really, because he doesn't ever turn around to see if we're hypnotized or not.
And, as far as I know, he's never bitten a student. Though if he turned up on Dateline, I wouldn't be one of the people saying, "Oh, we had no idea. He was always so nice and quiet."
The other thing is, we're working on our term paper. (Quarter paper to be accurate, but Mr. Slater doesn't care about accurate.) We're supposed to compare and contrast Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway.
I title my paper "The Crackhead and the Suicidal Alkie." Mr. Slater looks over my shoulder, wheezes through his chin-length nose hair and tells me, "That won't do."
No other explanation.
How's that for crappy teaching? Isn't he supposed to be supportive and foster my young mind?
Hello? Show of hands--how many of us in the world are forced to compare old dead guys who obviously tried to work their issues out on the page, and later killed themselves, or overdosed, instead of actually getting therapy? The answer is simple: all high school students. Everywhere.
I mean, if the dead guys couldn't understand what they wrote, why the heck do the rest of us have to try to make sense of it? Have you ever had a conversation with a stoner that was deep and intellectual?
The script goes like this:
Normal nondrugging Brain: 'Scuse me.
(Continue to stand there, and wait for Zoner to move out of the way to the locker room door. Make obvious signals about ticking off seconds until the tardy bell rings.)
(With a glazed slow-mo stare, Zoner notices you standing there. He holds out a self-rolled cig like it's manna. Exaggerated facial expression of devotion.)
Zoner: You want some?
Brain (speaking softly and slowly, as if being stalked by a wild animal): Could you just move? Away from the door?
Zoner (Looks around. Surprise evident on face.): This door?
Brain (Smile, nod. Repeat. Careful to move at the pace of Elmer's glue.): That's the one.
Zoner (said with excitement): Hey, Billy, did you know there's a door there?
Billy: No! (After shouting, Billy dissolves into a pool of unshowered hilarity.)
Zoner (breaking into gales of laughter, barely can be understood): Yeah, man.
Now, why in a hundred years, or even fifty, would I ask future generations to decipher the greatness of the door? I mean, really--let's look at Poe here. Doors, windows, floorboards. Ticking clocks, for heaven's sake.
Hemingway just tried to get gored at every turn. Not hard to do when falling down drunk. But he also fished, so drowning was a theme for him, too.
I really am on the right track. Mr. Slater, being a white man of dubious character, wouldn't understand that. Breathe, Gert. Breathe.
Tangent: sorry.
Lucas sits one row, one desk up.
He has the most adorable curl of dark chocolate on the back of his neck. Sometimes it hides under his shirt collar, or disappears for a few weeks when his mother insists he get his hair cut, but it's like Punxsutawney Phil and always reappears.
It's a cold autumn, so right now he basically wears jeans, dark denim or slightly worn, hiking boots, hoodies in black or gray and a T-shirt from one of the million soccer camps he's been to. He usually has a soccer ball between his feet that he rolls back and forth, in the butt-clenching tempo set by Mr. Slater.
(I'm fairly certain this is a subconscious coincidence and he's not into Mr. Slater's butt or anything. Like I said, mongoose-cobra. It's all hypnotic.)
Lucas occasionally smiles at me. Like yesterday when we did this ridiculous alliteration with our names. I'm Gert. Gertrude Doyle Garibaldi, to be all official.
Yeah, nice to meet you, too.
My parents were shocked by my arrival, not like they didn't have nine months to get used to the idea. They don't appreciate when I point this out. It's not as if the stork dropped me off. But they missed the memo on gestation. See, my mom was forty-five when she found out she was pregnant, and my dad sixty.
My brother, Mike, graduated from college that spring. I guess I can see why they were surprised.
In momentary astonishment that's lasted sixteen years and counting, they had a complete loss of sense when they named me. Either that, or they'd forgotten what it was like to be a kid, and picked the ugliest name on the planet just to see what kinds of hell a name can conjure.
They were too far removed from kidland, even from thirtiesville, to realize that Heather or Jessica or Amanda would have been much better choices.
But hello? Gertrude? The shock excuse only goes so far to get them off the hook. The worst part is, it's not even a family name. There's no reason at all they had to name me Gertrude.
I'm breathing. In. Out.
Tangent: sorry.
Product details
- ASIN : B000W94HDU
- Publisher : Delacorte Press (November 13, 2007)
- Publication date : November 13, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 516 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 306 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,314,419 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Hello bibliophiles,
Thanks for finding me here on Amazon. I'm thrilled to say I've moved into the hybrid author category and now am also publishing books directly to Kindle. I've always loved Christmas romances so this year I wrote my own. WISH is available directly to Kindle so be sure to check it out.
I delve into taboos with my stories--PIECES OF ME looks at the connections formed by pediatric organ donation, A MATTER OF DAYS is my ode to survivalists, the Meridian books deal with dying and death, and my Gert books take on human sexuality and "good girls." All are wrapped up in stories I hope have readers entertained and turning those pages.
When I'm writing there's always a candle going--with the correct scent for the book of course! The wrong candle can make me nauseous so I'm often in candle stores sniffing and snorting and thinking about projects! A MATTER OF DAYS candle was "dirt" and came from a great shop in Indiana. MERIDIAN was pine and fire, SPEED OF LIGHT grape bubblegum. ONE BUTT CHEEK AT A TIME required hazelnut coffee and that held true for the second in that series FROM BUTT TO BOOTY. My middle grade novel from Penguin coming out summer 2016 has been scented of fresh tomato!
Like the character of Auntie in MERIDIAN, I quilt. You can see photos of completed projects on my websites. I'm most proud of the quilts I've made and sent to The Freedom Quilt Project which matches quilts with families who've had a service person killed in action.
I have lots of animals: a dog, cats, a rooster named Hunk and a flock of hens who wander our property in Puget Sound. I like watching the nature channel out the windows and have fed wild birds for years.
I read 20 or more books concurrently. Everything is game for me--I never know when a character or book will need a certain piece of information so I read obscure to the popular, fiction and non, YA and adult. I change books the way other people change the channel. If you're interested in what I like visit my personal website and check out the best of page where I list books I'm reading and my thoughts.
I'm addicted to trashy reality television--I'm sure you've wondered who the people are who watch those VH1 and MTV love shows--that'll be me! I adore sour candy like Sour Patch Kids, Gummy Worms, and hard jawbreakers. I'm always listening to loud music--be it pop, international hits, classical, musical or metal. There's a soundtrack/playlist for each of my projects and it helps me get into the writing zone faster to have the right music going.
I'm grateful for the awards my books have received but nothing beats a heartfelt message from a reader who found comfort, solace, joy, perspective or something else personal in one of my stories. PIECES OF ME received a Kirkus star, Kirkus Award Nominee, and incredible blurbs from some of my favorite authors. A MATTER OF DAYS is a Lonestar Book in Texas, a finalist for the Truman award, Cybil Award nominee. MERIDIAN was an Arkansas state book award winner.
I love connecting with readers--find me on Facebook, twitter @writeamberkizer, my official website: AmberKizer.com.
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Those of you prudes who dislike the Alice series because of the explicitness, won't like Butt Cheek. (I suppose the title would give you a clue to that.)
As in one of the Alice books, Gert's health ed teacher gives the class homework of using a mirror to get acquainted with their bodies. Gert slow-dances with a boy and realizes that he is really up about dancing with her. She dresses as a mermaid on the homecoming float in October and wishes her bikini top was thicker. All sweet, innocent stuff but not for religiously uptight parents.
Gertrude "Gert" Garibaldi is fifteen. She was born when her only other sibling, a brother, was starting college. She asks herself everyday why she was blessed/cursed with ancient parents. From her out-of-touch parents to her Hello, Kitty bedspread and fuzzy pink phone, Gert feels she has more questions about her place in the social scene than there are answers.
Adam is Gert's best friend. He has a crush on Tim, and Gert has a crush on Lucas, Tim's gorgeous twin brother. Unfortunately, Gert sees more of Tim when she acts as chaperone whenever Adam and Tim decide to venture out. Her heartthrob, Lucas, doesn't even seem to know she exists.
Gert's social situation does improve when Stephen reveals his interest. Thanks to Stephen, Gert attends the homecoming dance, actually dances, and has her first kiss.
Author Amber Kizer provides entertainment beginning on page one. Imagine a driver's ed teacher who uses a walker and needs a portable oxygen supply to survive the experience. Picture a principal who decides each student's weight should be recorded and graded on report cards. Add to that a group project with one partner who is Gert's sworn enemy and a sex ed teacher who has everyone exploring where no one has dared to go before.
Have fun reading this one, but be careful when and where you read it. Laughing out loud is sometimes frowned upon.
Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"
Written with a keen wit and smart sense of humor, if you're like me, you won't be able to put this book down! I can't wait for the series to continue!