REVIEWS of HOW TO GET SUSPENDED AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE -Bookshelves of Doom Calls it "a freeking laugh riot." Full review The Edge of the Forest Review and open letter, plus the reviewer's original notes The Excelsior File Thrushmetal review Required Reading review and interview Ms. Yingling Reads Kelly Fineman: Writing and Ruminating Review and interview A True Reality added me to the list of "geeky hot authorboyz" (finally!) Full reviews: How To Get Suspended and Influence People by Adam Selzer - Delacorte Press, Feb 13, 2007 Kirkus Eighth-grader Leon Noside Harris is in the "gifted pool" at school. None of the students like their overbearing teacher, Mrs. Smollet; she seems to want to run the school and their lives, but thinks the gifted will be enriched by doing nonstop crossword puzzles. When given the chance to make an instructional short feature for younger students in Mr. Streich's Advanced Studies class, Leon decides to make a sex-ed documentary, letting kids know that thinking about sex is normal. Mrs. Smollet finds out and gets Leon suspended for "morals violations." His friends leak the story to the other students, and Leon becomes a folk hero with great results. In his debut, Selzer manages to capture the voice of a smarter-than-average young teen as he humorously observes his parents, the teachers and his classmates. Pervasive strong language and subject matter bump up the target audience, but there's definite appeal in the "kid-wins-over-teacher" plot and some real laughs along the way to victory. (Fiction. 13-15) How To Get Suspended and Influence People by Adam Selzer - Delacorte Press, Feb 13, 2007 Booklist, January 2007 Selzer's zany, edgy debut thumbs its nose at censorship and prudishness as its eighth-grade hero tries to make a "frank, honest, and artistic sex-ed video" for a peer-education project. Leon wants to avoid rehashing the staid diagrams and dramatizations typical of the genre. Inspired by his worldly friend and crush Anna, who introduces him to avant-garde cinema, he creates a nonsensical pastiche of Great Masters nudes, symbolic images, and narrated sonnets about body changes and "whacking off." His creative triumph, followed by his suspension and the ensuing uproar, unfolds in a comic, first-person narrative, laden with sarcasm, occasional cussing ("bullshit"), and mostly abstract references to sex. Characters are over-the-top in this slapstick parable, and it all comes to a pointed end. Still, many creative young readers-perhaps especially those who, like Leon, identify with "miscreant kids who just happen to read books from the adult section in the library"-will appreciate the plot's outrageousness and applaud Leon's commitment to his quirky vision. -Jennifer Mattson, Booklist From School Library Journal: SELZER, Adam. How to Get Suspended and Influence People. 183p. CIP. Delacorte. 2007. Tr $15.99. ISBN 978-0-385-73369-4; PLB $18.99. ISBN 978-0-385-90384-4. LC 2006020438. Gr 6-8 - Thirteen-year-old Leon Noside (Edison spelled backwards) Harris has spent a lifetime hating the middle name his father gave him as an insult to Thomas Edison. Smart-mouthed and gifted, he uses his creative resources—a talent he inherited from parents who spend hours concocting their own inventions whether in the garage or the kitchen-to make an avant-garde sex-education video that tells kids that masturbation is normal. Leon is suspended, and the students stage a near riot, complete with "Free Leon Harris" signs. This isn't the first time that Mrs. Smollet, the program director for the gifted pool, has had negative encounters with her students, but it is the first time that Leon is a hero at school. The administration is challenged to sort out the real problem: Is it Leon, or Mrs. Smollet? This funny, fast-paced novel is filled with characters who epitomize the middle school experience, and it presents a lesson or two about free speech as well.-Pat Scales, formerly at South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville