Stoner & Spaz

by Ron Koertge

Book Overview

For sixteen-year-old Ben Bancroft - a kid with cerebral palsy, no parents, and an overprotective grandmother - the closest thing to happiness is hunkering alone in the back of the Rialto Theatre and watching Bride of Frankenstein for the umpteenth time. The last person he wants to run into is drugged-up Colleen Minou, resplendent in ripped tights, neon miniskirt, and an impressive array of tattoos. But when Colleen climbs into the seat beside him...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0763621501
• ISBN13: 9780763621506
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
• Length: 169 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.8" x 7.0"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

Not Just for CP Kids

This was an amazing book, I don't believe I've ever enjoyed reading as much as I did with this book. I'm not someone who pleasure reads a lot, but I truthfully enoyed reading this book, and heard from a friend it was good. It was on our school summer reading list so I picked it up. I read it all in one day, which isn't too much of a big deal since it's pretty short. However I felt, the book was great, and I don't agree with what a few other people are saying. One person said it wasn't realistic, that the main girl Coleen never suffered withdrawls are anything... but comon in the end she winds up being pretty much the way she started. And someone else said that there was to much cursing, however without the swearing would it have accurately portrayed the world i live in? I will admit that my review may be a little biased because I am 15, and I go through all the things these teens went through, but i actually think thats great. The writer did a great job of showing what a lot of teens go through, and anyone that thinks the book was over the top or overexagerated needs to go take a trip to their nearest highschool. The last thing i wanted to address, and what I felt was the best part of the book, the ending: someone said it was half-assed. Truth is it was perfect, the ending was sort of happy but at the same time it was sorta sad, but definitly very realistic. It kind of made me sad, because I have a friend that seems so much like Coleen, and truth is our relationship kinda did the same thing. Overall one of my favorite books ever.

"Stoner and Spaz"

I have CP like the main boy in the book (though nowhere near as severe, you can hardly tell I have it) and I thought it was an excellent portrayal of the everyday challenges people with CP and other movement disabilities face when trying to fit in with "normal" people"Stoner and Spaz" is about a romance between 2 oddities, Ben Bancroft, a boy with spastic CP and Colleen Minou, a young druggie. Ben is very insecure within himself and mostly just mooches around at the movies rather than face the jeers and taunts of his fellow peers. It is not until Colleen comes into his life that he attempts to go about the usual social activities of a 16 yr old boy. With Colleen he smokes, drinks, goes to dances and has sex. This book is an excellent read which makes the reader cry, laugh and gasp all at once. I highly recommend it.

Tough, funny, realistic...I could go on & on

This is a story about an unusual friendship between a lonely physically handicapped "spaz" whose grandmother makes him wear $70 Brooks Brothers shirts to school and a "stoner" party girl who'll "get high and do anything."Ron Koertge knows how people -- especially kids -- talk and, for me, hearing his characters' voices is the best part of any Koertge book. Ben (the "spaz" of the title, he is afflicted with cerebral palsy) is smart, funny, and charming, and when Colleen (the "stoner") tells him that half the girls in her rehab group want to be his girlfriend, I couldn't help but think, "If I were in high school, I'd wanna be his girlfriend too!" Colleen is also smart -- a fact that shines through her druggy haze -- as well as tough and fascinating. It's easy to see why Ben is drawn to her. I love the characterization of Ben's proper, uptight grandmother. She's prim without ever being a stereotype.As Ben and Colleen become friends, they help each other to see themselves more clearly. Colleen says Ben's wasted, atrophied arm is not so bad. Ben says Colleen's "ice-cream habit" is hurting her more than she realizes. And so Ben attempts to get to know more people at school, and Colleen checks into a rehab program. As they "stand up and fall down, stand up and fall down," as their friend Marcie says, which one of them will remain standing? Can their strange friendship survive? Check out this fast read to find out.

Richie's Picks: STONER & SPAZ

Relatively early on in my career as a "children's" bookbuyer I had the great fortune to participate in a day-long workshop discussing "teen" literature. The experts from whom I was to learn that day were Michael Cart and Richard Jackson. Between them, they made several points that have stuck with me as I define and evaluate young adult literature. Among the words of wisdom that day were: Adolescents create and re-create themselves on a daily basis as they search for their identity. Good teen literature frequently provides characters whose roles teen readers can try on vicariously as if they were cloaks. Good teen literature frequently poses more questions than it provides answers. That day's presentations were the inspiration for my creating a separate young adult section--after a week of quoting the experts I was given the okay to purchase and shelve those books away from the kids' stuff, in the process becoming the "children's and young adult" buyer. This division, of course, is the rule rather than the exception in bookstores and libraries today. STONER AND SPAZ, set in LA, is the latest, perfect example of what young adult fiction is all about. In addition, STONER AND SPAZ is a book that pays homage to film the way SEEK does to radio. Ben (Spaz) Bancroft, a teen "cinefile" whose aloofness is the result of his self-consciousness over his dragging an arm and a leg due to cerebral palsy, tells us the story of his entanglement with Colleen (Stoner) Minou, who is as engaging, witty, and tough as Mona Lisa Vito, Marisa Tomei's character in My Cousin Vinnie. Colleen's boyfriend, Ed, is studying to be a drug lord. Early on, as Ben waits to hand over the report on THE GREAT GATSBY for which Colleen has hit him up, he gives us a look at Ed in action: "Waiting there I feel, I don't know anthropological, I guess. I just need a pair of binoculars and a field guide to watch Ed Dorn in his black jeans and black T-shirt make the rounds, moving from the gangstas in their huge pants through the Mexican tough guys and into the Asian kung-fu fighters. Each clique has a different handshake, and Ed knows them all. He knows which girl's hand to grab and rub over his shaved head, which brother to joke with, which guy's Pepsi to snatch and take a sip of, which one to lean into and whisper. Colleen walks a few steps behind. She wears knee-high silver boots and looks like someone from a different galaxy." When Colleen catches up with Ben, he mentions to her: "'I was watching Ed in action. He's like Louis the Fourteenth,' I said, 'moving through the gardens at Versailles dispensing favors.'" "'Louis better watch his ass,' says Colleen. 'This is Ed's turf.'" Ben has been raised by his grandmother, who dresses him in prep garb and who meets Colleen when she invites herself for a ride home in Grandma's Cadillac and then endears herself to Grandma by immediately puking out the window. Ben has never given Grandma a bit of trouble before. She cannot understa

WOW.

Koertge has a knack for capturing the bare essense of his characters. Ben and Colleen are so real you'll be able to taste them. Driven by clean and very true dialogue, "Stoner and Spaz" won't let you go. Read it. Then read it again.