Author: Tali Nay
Publisher: Corner Chapter Press
Source: From author for review
Goodreads Summary:
"Do you have to have sex to have a baby?" It's a question that ten-year-old Tali Nay asked the office assistant at her elementary school after the woman had done her best to explain how it all happened to a roomful of confused girls. Or maybe Tali was the only one who was confused. It's entirely possible, for if there's anything she knew at this point in her schooling, it was that she—without fail—was the last to know about anything interesting. Take her first day of kindergarten, where it turned out that every other kid already knew which letters were the vowels. Her first lesson as a student was consequently one of humiliation, and her second—only slightly less important—was that puking in a classroom tends to start a chain reaction. A refreshingly honest deep-dive into what we actually take away from a public education, this hilarious and heartfelt memoir captures the things we learn in school that are never part of any lesson plan yet somehow have the biggest impact upon the shaping of our perceptions over the years we spend in a classroom. Things like competition, failure, scandal, popularity, disillusionment, triumph, guilt, and, of course, throwing up in public. From the glorious to the gloriously awkward, this everyman tale is a story of growing up, one semester at a time.
My Thoughts:
Warning: Mild Spoilers
I really struggled coming up with a rating for this book. In some ways, I really loved this book and in some ways, I just couldn't stand it. I'll start with the good points. Tali Nay is a very talented writer and I really loved her writing style and it kept me wanting to read more. I would definitely buy any other book she wrote. Her writing is funny and fun and very enjoyable to read. Each little story was worth reading and helped to add bit by bit to the story and I really liked the structure of the novel.
However, I didn't much care for the story itself. While often describing her life in words like tragic, humiliating, and unpopular, it's kind of hard to hear these words describing a schooling which I can only think of as just about perfect. As the valedictorian, prize-winning writer, lead actress, lead singer, prom queen, and class officer who is almost angelically perfect and naive, I really fail to view her life as anything close to tragic. I just got frustrated listening to the complaints for a student who really couldn't have asked for much more.
Rating: 3/5
