REVIEWS OF PIRATES OF THE RETAIL WASTELAND From Teenspace: When, at age thirteen, you create an avant-garde sex–ed video that puts your entire school in a an uproar (How to Get Suspended and Influence People), it might be hard for the average person to figure out how to make their fourteenth year just as memorable. Of course, Leon Noside Harris is not your average person, and that’s kind of the point. For his next act, Leon, part of a group of gifted students, decides to enlist the help of his friends in staging and filming a takeover of a coffee house, part of a behemoth chain, which is threatening to push his favorite little neighborhood shop out of business. When he is not busy filming, Leon spends his time attempting to evade his outwardly quiet classmate, Jenny, who is crushing on him big time, and his accountant father, who’s matching his son’ s offbeat outlook by sporting a green Mohawk. This breezy, comic tale is as invigorating and as smoothly satisfying as a good caffe latte. From Booklist: Leon and his friends want to strike a blow against corporate America and protest the destruction of his local downtown, but how? After agonized thought (some about the project, most about girls), Leon decides that he and his buddies should act like pirates and take over the soulless coffee franchise, Wackfords. The takeover will be filmed and used to highlight the difference between ugly strip development and the quirky downtown with its arty coffee shop, Sip. Wildly eccentric characters (some almost caricatures) people the pages, including Leon's accountant father, who sports a green mohawk, and a punky ballroom-dancing barista. Comic situations are recounted by flippant, hypersmart Leon, who often sounds older than his 14 years. Give this to fans of Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis (2004) who enjoy seeing smart, rule-breaking kids take on the adult world. - Suzanne Harold BLOG REVIEWS: The Goddess of YA Literature: "The entire cast of characters of this novel is memorable. There are precious few books that show gifted kids for what they can be: miscreants intent on bending all the rules as far as they can before they break....Selzer captures them with all their spirit, their quick thinking, their sense of humor, and their ability to find logic when there is none apparent." Bookslut:"This is a very unusual group of kids..."