Awards

• Commended for Capitol Choices: Noteworthy Books for Children and Teens (Ten to Fourteen) 2012
• Short-listed for Beehive Awards (Young Adult) 2013
• Short-listed for Florida Teens Read 2013
• Short-listed for Keystone to Reading Book Award (High School) 2013

Overview

"Janie Gorman wants to be normal. The problem with that: she’s not. She’s smart and creative and a little bit funky. She’s also an unwilling player in her parents’ modern-hippy, let’s-live-on-a-goat-farm experiment (regretfully, instigated by a younger, much more enthusiastic Janie). This, to put it simply, is not helping Janie reach that “normal target.” She has to milk goats every day…and endure her mother’s pseudo celebrity in the homemade-life, crunchy mom blogosphere. Goodbye the days of frozen lasagna and suburban living, hello crazy long bus ride to high school and total isolation--and hovering embarrassments of all kinds. The fresh baked bread is good…the threat of homemade jeans, not so much. It would be nice to go back to that old suburban life…or some grown up, high school version of it, complete with nice, normal boyfriends who wear crew neck sweaters and like social studies. So, what’s wrong with normal? Well, kind of everything. She knows that, of course, why else would she learn bass and join Jam Band, how else would she know to idolize infamous wild-child and high school senior Emma (her best friend Sarah’s older sister), why else would she get arrested while doing a school project on a local freedom school (jail was not part of the assignment). And, why else would she kind of be falling in ""like"" with a boy named Monster—yes, that is his real name. Janie was going for normal, but she missed her mark by about ten miles…and we mean that as a compliment. Frances O’Roark Dowell’s fierce humor and keen eye make her YA debut literary and wise. In the spirit of John Green and E. Lockhart, Dowell’s relatable, quirky characters and clever, fluid writing prove that growing up gets complicated…and normal is WAY overrated."

Full Product Details

9781416995852

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Reviews

A farm girl who's far from normal <p> Review By Emily Masters <p> Janie Gorman strives to be a normal high school freshman, but the fact that she lives on a goat farm doesn't help her much in her quest for normal. She hops on the school bus smelling of goat poop (thanks to her morning chore of milking the goats), and she eats lunch in the library, because none of her friends have the same lunch period as her. To make matters worse, Janie's mom insists on writing an extremely embarrassing blog about farm life. None of these trials are made any easier by Janie's knowledge that she was the one who recommended the move to the farm in the first place! <p> In a realistic and funny voice, Janie manages to make fun of herself and her peculiar situation in a way that provokes genuine empathy. She experiences her first real crush on a boy and feels the pain of trying to hang onto an old and cherished friendship in the face of quite a few challenges. She learns that making new friendsa

A farm girl who's far from normal <p> Review By Emily Masters <p> Janie Gorman strives to be a normal high school freshman, but the fact that she lives on a goat farm doesn't help her much in her quest for normal. She hops on the school bus smelling of goat poop (thanks to her morning chore of milking the goats), and she eats lunch in the library, because none of her friends have the same lunch period as her. To make matters worse, Janie's mom insists on writing an extremely embarrassing blog about farm life. None of these trials are made any easier by Janie's knowledge that she was the one who recommended the move to the farm in the first place! <p> In a realistic and funny voice, Janie manages to make fun of herself and her peculiar situation in a way that provokes genuine empathy. She experiences her first real crush on a boy and feels the pain of trying to hang onto an old and cherished friendship in the face of quite a few challenges. She learns that making new friendsn

A farm girl who's far from normal <p> Review By Emily Masters <p> Janie Gorman strives to be a normal high school freshman, but the fact that she lives on a goat farm doesn't help her much in her quest for normal. She hops on the school bus smelling of goat poop (thanks to her morning chore of milking the goats), and she eats lunch in the library, because none of her friends have the same lunch period as her. To make matters worse, Janie's mom insists on writing an extremely embarrassing blog about farm life. None of these trials are made any easier by Janie's knowledge that she was the one who recommended the move to the farm in the first place! <p> In a realistic and funny voice, Janie manages to make fun of herself and her peculiar situation in a way that provokes genuine empathy. She experiences her first real crush on a boy and feels the pain of trying to hang onto an old and cherished friendship in the face of quite a few challenges. She learns that making new friendsh

A farm girl who's far from normal Review By Emily Masters Janie Gorman strives to be a normal high school freshman, but the fact that she lives on a goat farm doesn t help her much in her quest for normal. She hops on the school bus smelling of goat poop (thanks to her morning chore of milking the goats), and she eats lunch in the library, because none of her friends have the same lunch period as her. To make matters worse, Janie s mom insists on writing an extremely embarrassing blog about farm life. None of these trials are made any easier by Janie s knowledge that she was the one who recommended the move to the farm in the first place! In a realistic and funny voice, Janie manages to make fun of herself and her peculiar situation in a way that provokes genuine empathy. She experiences her first real crush on a boy and feels the pain of trying to hang onto an old and cherished friendship in the face of quite a few challenges. She learns that making new friends can be just as wonderful as hanging onto the old, and she deals with the loss of someone important to her, learning a lot about herself in the process. She does all of this with humor and a great deal of self-awareness. Although she wants to be normal, she begins to embrace what it is that makes her different, and that is refreshing and fun to read. Although Frances O Roark Dowell is a best-selling and highly acclaimed author of novels for young readers, Ten Miles Past Normal is her first novel for teens. She lives up to her acclaim in this unusual coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old girl who is far from normal, but very endearing. --BookPage

Author Information

Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar Award and the William Allen White Award; Where I’d Like to Be; The Secret Language of Girls and its sequels The Kind of Friends We Used to Be and The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away; Chicken Boy; Shooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Award; the Phineas L. MacGuire series; Falling In; The Second Life of Abigail Walker, which received three starred reviews; Anybody Shining; Ten Miles Past Normal; Trouble the Water; the Sam the Man series; The Class; How to Build a Story; and most recently, Hazard. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.

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