The Revealers may be the most-used novel in U.S. middle schools today. Take a look inside.

REVEALERS front cover

A middle-school novel that deals realistically with bullying in a multi-character story, The Revealers has been the focus of reading-and-discussion projects in well over 1,000 middle schools. Here's an excerpt:

I started getting stomachaches every morning and bad heaadaches at two o’clock every afternoon. I didn’t tell anybody. Each day I tried to go home a different way. I didn’t spend my $1.10 on root beer any more because I couldn’t go near the store. I started buying superhero comics in the drugstore, instead.

... My favorite was Daredevil. Even though he’s blind, he’s The Man without Fear. Courage is his power, and extrasensitive perception. One night in my room I cut out a full-page picture of Daredevil in action, swinging from a rope between two skyscrapers on a dark night way above the city. I folded the picture in a tight little square and kept it in my pocket the next day at school, so I could touch it if I needed to. All day, I didn’t see Richie even once. I was so happy, by the end of the day, I felt like I was skating.

The Revealers sequel opens up middle schoolers' struggles to become themselves in a hyper-connected world.

True Shoes cover 6-18-2013

from True Shoes:

It was a text from Turner. Looked like he'd broadcast it.

Check out my YouTube site at 6 p.m. tomorrow — world premiere of my new film, THE LUNCHROOM INCIDENT

Turner’s dream was to post a film that caught fire and got a million zillion hits before he was even in high school. You could go online and see his best work so far, like his video Gag Me With a Fork that showed these girls, one after another, with appalled and disgusted expressions (he’d gone up to them outside school and asked things like, “How would you rather die, drowing in a pool of mucus or sliding down a ten-foot razor blade?”)

Turner’s other cool short film was Sneakerspy, where he put his mini-cam on top of his backpack when he was standing by his locker. It was down by the floor and it filmed people going by, at the level you’d see if you were a small dog. That video was great; it was all legs and shoes and noises. It made you see and hear things in a whole new way.

That was Turner, too, seeing things in his own way through his camera. Sometimes it got a little hard to tell him and it apart.

"Picture a troubled teen quietly removing this book from the school library shelves, then sitting down ... and devouring it."

Prince front cover high res

He looked at me with his face scrunched up. “What is it with you, Butterfield?”

“You can’t come in right now. And I can’t talk right now.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because my dad’s sick. Okay? It’s not a good time.”

Oscar cocked his head. “Sounds like your dad’s watching TV.”

“So? Don’t you ever watch TV when you’re sick?”

Just then heavy, stumbling footsteps hurried up the hall. From the bathroom we heard the roar of someone throwing up. Oscar’s eyes got wide. I slammed the window closed, and went to help my dad.

from The Prince of Denial. Headline from the book's review in Foreword Reviews.