Big Mouth & Ugly Girl

Starred review from May 12, 2003
A high school junior leaps to her classmate's defense when his throwaway joke about blowing up the school makes him a suspected terrorist. "The relationship between the two grows credibly and compellingly, against a convincing high school backdrop," said PW
in a starred review. Ages 12-up.

Never were a pair so completely mismatched! Matt Donaghy, affable big mouth and vice president of the junior class, and Ursula Riggs, tough-spirited loner and hoops star, might never have crossed paths were it not for Matt's irreversible error, his loud, sarcastic, seemingly harmless joke about blowing up Rocky River High. Screen celebs Hilary Swank and Chad Lowe deliver alternating chapters in perfect counterpoint, superbly capturing the divergent emotional journeys in affect, tone, and pacing. When Matt is arrested and his life changes forever in a downward spiral of suspicion, fear, guilt by association, and media madness, gruff Urs is the only one to defend him, an act born of pure conscience and moral fiber that nevertheless leads to emotional entanglement. Matt's panic, his fury, his pitiful whining are juxtaposed with Ursula's harsh, unruffled, and unrelenting sarcasm. Even the urgent e-mail exchanges find voice in an audio recording that will be in huge demand by teens. T.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2003 Audie Award Winner (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine