Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool: A Year in an American High School

by Elisha Cooper

Elisha Cooper spent a year hanging out at a Chicago high schoola listening, watching, questioning, and sketching the students. He followed eight kids in particular, mostly seniors, through their entire year, and by telling their specific storiesaof classes, extra-curriculars, friends, romances, and familyahe gives us a more general picture of what itas like to be a high school student today. Part documentary, part soap opera, part sketchbook, this...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803731698
• ISBN13: 9780803731691
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Dial Books
• Length: 257 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 7.1"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Another gem

Cooper follows up his witty "Crawling: A Father's First Year" with another gem. In "R/H/T/C", he entertains with the narrative of eight Chicago high school students through their senior year, capturing the challenges of self-absorbed adolescence as I had forgotten it. He shows these kids for who they are, avoidig tempting cliches, instead weaving in his trademark wit and analogisms. I often found myself laughing out loud. The book brought back memories of classmates of old, and a little bit of myself in one of the characters (but im not telling which one!). A really enjoyable read.

A sneak-peak into what it would be like to be 17 again

As an adult reading ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool, one can't but help to be taken back to the days in high school. And, to feel fairly relieved not to be there again. The excitement of having your whole life in front of you, but also the angst of an uncertain future and the peer pressure to underachieve, as well as the complications of being a youth in 2008 -- all these things come through via the subjects of Cooper's book, and Cooper does a great job of presenting them in a (fairly) dispassionate light so that the reader can more experience than judge the happenings. As a father of a <1 year old girl, I read ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool thinking all the while of what lies ahead for my little girl and thinking, "can I keep her a toddler all her life??" but also realizing that the enormity of the exciting experiences that await her!

fabulous/interesting/relevant/poignant

I was riveted by this carte-blanche-access account of real teens in a real school. "American Teen" has nothing on Cooper! I highly recommend this alternately heartbreaking and hopeful story.

fast times

It's hard for adults to imagine having to survive high school again, and maybe it's hard for high schoolers to imagine what anything beyond might hold, so this book has difficult territory to cover from the outset. How can the author make fresh what we've all been through and often hoped to forget? Fortunately, Cooper's patient observations and painterly eye let us slip in unseen into the chaos. With a point of view that is clearly honest, sometimes stern, and deliciously wry, he manages to pace us through a place that seems to spin at the speed of teen. It's hard not to think of the ordinary as heroes, and therefore vice versa, and it makes this story a wild success. Definitely for your must-read list!

A great year in the life of a Chicago high school

When you spend your days reading YA novels like Gossip Girl and Gingerbread, you tend to view high school as a place where a bunch of shallow, back-stabbing, albeit totally together and well-coiffed, brats come together to compare notes. Ridiculous/ Hilarious/ Terrible/ Cool reminds jaded adults like myself that this is so not the case. This book reminded me that it's not easy to be a high school student, and it's particularly hard to be a senior. Work, tests, college application essays, dance, theater, soccer, student council and other extra-curricular activities in and out of school - it's enough to give any adult anxiety, let alone 17-year-olds. How do they do it? And in the case of 6 of the 8 students observed in this book, how do they do it so well? Walter Payton High School is a good high school. Teens from all over Chicago apply to become students, and with the motto "We nurture leaders," it's no wonder so many kids want to go to this new school. It's also no wonder that so many of the students observed succeeded in accomplishing their goals, or at least most of them. Having said this, make no mistake, Walter Payton is still an urban high school. The infamous Cabrini Green Housing Projects loom to the West of the school. It is diverse with a third of the students being black, a third white and a third Latino, and with a small percentage of Asian students. Expectations are high, and security is tight. It's not easy to succeed at Walter Payton. What these six seniors accomplished is pretty impressive. As for the juniors, Anthony and Zef, they have another year to get it together, and the reader has no doubt that they will. This book definitely fills one with hope for future generations. For the rest of this review and others, see my site.