Happy Face by Stephen Emond YP FIC EMOND

The bad news is that our hero’s life is pretty terrible. The good news is he’s at a new school and nobody knows it! That’s how he becomes Happyface, the likeable (and for the first time ever popular) guy that always has a funny joke and a smile. Told entirely through Happyface’s journal and his sketches see his transformation from geek to cool and if he can stand keeping up a Happyface and all his secrets from his new friends.

I picked this up thinking “Oh, a Diary of a Wimpy Kid for the high school set,” but soon realized that it is more Diary of a Wimpy Kid but he has unaddressed emotional problems! However, by the time I was done I realized that Happyface is good enough to stand entirely on its own. Happyface is a very funny narrator and also a nicely complex character. He hides his past from the reader as well as his new friends so it adds excitement having him reveal it over time. I love the drawings and minicomics that go throughout the book. They never feel gimmicky and always work to make the story better and reveal Happyface’s character. The book also has well developed supporting characters that add to the drama and comedy. Give it a shot if you are looking for something funny with a bit of drama.

The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Josh Berk YP FIC BERK

Will Halpin leaves his deaf school because he is tired of playing the "Deaf Enough" game. He's starting in a 'normal' high school where he has to sit at the sidelines of each class to read lips of the teacher and his classmates. Being deaf and overweight, Will is used to being invisible and retreats to his own (usually hilarious) thoughts. All this changes with two things: making friends with someone AS unpopular as him and deciding to solve a murder mystery.

This is one of the funniest books I've read in a good while. Will is one of the best written and wittiest characters in 'loser fiction' I have seen. I really loved learning about deaf culture in such a humorous way. The murder mystery isn’t all that exciting, but Will and his friend’s interactions more than make up for it. This is a great read for anyone looking for something funny and likes stories about underdogs.

The 'Catcher' Cult

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King Dork / by Frank Portman

"I suppose I fit the traditional mold of the brainy, freaky, oddball kid who reads too much, so bright that his genius is sometimes mistaken for just being retarded." (p.5)

Tom Henderson might be called "Chi-Mo" by others (hint: not a coffee), but he'll always prefer his own self-tailored moniker, King Dork ("...a silent protest and acknowledgement of reality at the same time"). No, he doesn't command a "nerd army, or preside over a realm of the socially ill-equipped"; he's just been rendered inferior by all his "psycho-normal" peers that stalk the halls of "standard, generic High School Hell". When his personal dignity's not under assault, he and co-dork Sam Hellerman like to hang out at his ultra-dysfunctional house where, avoiding whiny sister species and flaky parental units, they continue work on their band's next album. Make that its first album...rather, its first song...or, failing that, a new band altogether.

Being 'below the bottom' of the high school pecking order's bad enough, but not knowing why your cop father was killed in the line of duty is its own self-sustaining mystery. Indeed, it seems a hopeless quandary until strange clues unearth in the most insanely ironic places; a wackjob teacher's crusty sarcasm, an old copy of Catcher in the Rye, mysterious Bible coding, etc., all start to shed light on the "accident" in question. Meanwhile, something even more mystifying emerges. Tom/"Chi-Mo" begins having "girl" encounters after a clandestine incident at a halloween party--involving a rather precociously attired female--sets him on the trail of an altogether different mystery.

Longtime Rock singer/songwriter Frank Portman has quite a knack for fiction. Not only is this book an authentic characterization of protagonist Tom/"Chi-Mo"/"King Dork"..., it's a downright laugh riot as a totally dead-on depiction of the cynical teenage mentality. Where soooo many books/movies/TV/music go wrong-wrong-wrong in duplicating the teenage microcosm is where King Dork gets it right: a recognition that the high school domain is all too often just the "familiar monotony" of "tedious" and "horrifying" incidents. Even with the somewhat tacked-on subplot, this book is a can't-put-downer as Tom eventually establishes some authority to accomodate his angst-ridden, skeptic-laden identity.