Waiting for Gonzo

October 27, 2014
The last thing British teenager Marcus wants is to make a bad impression on his first day at a new school, but things go from bad (mistakenly bringing the laundry bag instead of his book bag) to worse (getting chased by a dog on his way home). In just a few hours, Marcus humiliates himself in front of the school bully, enrages a girl with anger management problems, and causes a car accident that leaves his sculptor mother with a broken arm. All of these disasters must be sorted out, but Marcus’s dilemmas pale in comparison to those of his 17-year-old sister, who hasn’t yet found the courage to tell their parents that she’s pregnant. In a darkly comic story written as Marcus’s monologue to his unborn nephew (whom he nicknames Gonzo), Cousins (15 Days Without a Head) offers a vibrant, highly visual account of teen angst and backfiring schemes. Marcus makes more than a few mistakes at school and at home, but readers will never doubt that his heart is in the right place. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jenny Savill, Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

November 1, 2014
Oz, aka Marcus Osbourne, faces unexpected challenges when his family relocates from London to a farmhouse in a northern village.He starts his first day of Year Nine in a school where classmates with thick accents give him a new nickname, "Kecks," for the girls' underwear that spills out of the family's laundry bag he grabbed by mistake. It's downhill from there as Oz finds himself on the wrong side of tough-girl Isobel, known as "Psycho Skinner," and befriended by a fantasy geek named Ryan, who participates in re-enactments of movies and books, down to the "hobbit socks" he made himself. When Oz finds out that his 17-year-old sister, Meg, is pregnant with her ex-boyfriend's baby, he starts to write down everything that's happening to share with the child he calls Gonzo in the unlikely event that Meg will decide against termination. In a three-part message to the baby starting with "The Beginning / G minus 245," narrator Oz frames a series of humorous events and near disasters with chapter headings like "The Life-Sucking Brick of Nonsense" as he navigates new emotional territory. Cousins follows up his debut (15 Days Without a Head, 2013) with another tightly woven, heartwarming story of the ups and downs in the life of a teenager and his family. (Fiction. 12 & up)

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December 1, 2014

Gr 7 Up-Oz has just moved from his home in London to a small, sleepy village hours away from the big city. He misses his friends, does not like his family's fixer-upper farmhouse, and is not doing a great job making friends. On the first day of school he realizes that instead of bringing his school bag, he has brought his sister's dirty laundry, and, to make matters worse, he has decided that drawing a mustache and glasses on a girl's photo in the school display case is a good idea. Sadly, Oz is unaware that the girl is the school bully who terrifies everyone, even the other bullies. Oz never thinks his plans through and Waiting for Gonzo is like watching one botched attempt after another to fix what has gone wrong: trying to make friends with the school bully by feeding her dog (good) chicken bones (bad); or helpfully telling his sister's boyfriend all of her "flaws," causing him to leave her. But Oz remains hopeful and fairly optimistic that eventually he will get something right, so he keeps trying. The protagonist is well rounded and true to the awkwardness of a teenage boy trying to find his way. One oddity is the narrative structure: the story is told in conversation to "G," whom readers don't know the identity of until midway through the book. A good general purchase.-Lisa Nabel, Dayton Metro Library, OH

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2014
Grades 9-12 Poor Oz. He has traded everything familiar for a new high school and schoolmatesall for his mum's job and a ramshackle house. Everything Oz does is wrong. He draws a mustache on a picture of the meanest girl in school, offends the only guy who wants to be his friend, and causes his mother's automobile accident. Things only get worse when he learns his sister is pregnant. Cousins has written a humorous, poignant novel of a family in crisis. Oz is both endearing and maddening, and he is deeply concerned about his sister and worried about his pending nephew, Gonzo. The narrative is structured as Oz's running conversation with Gonzo, making sure the newest family member knows his side of the story. In spite of the Briticisms that pepper the story, it's hard to imagine a more realistic portrait of the perils of adolescent maleness. Add to that an Internet soundtrack of the music Oz so enjoys and you have an all-too-familiar yet unique look at the importance of family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)