Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging

Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging
Louise Rennison

New York: Harper Collins, 1999

Annotation: The Ace gang are out to conquer new and undiscovered territory where no eighth grader has gone before...except the rough crowd. They are about to learn the unmentionable and find out what it's all about and in the process, they are going to tell each other EVERYTHING about it. This mysterious matter that has Georgia Nicholson on the phone with Jas for long periods at a time is: Boys. And she's just met the ultimate sex god of them all, who also works at a vegetable market. But she has to overcome some major obstacles, including the zit on her nose, the fact that her nose is so big, she doesn't have any experience snogging, her baby sister (who is always in her care) just informed the sex god that she's performed a big poo, her wild cat Angus, and her irritating parents, who always treat her like she's still a little girl in rompers and not a budding woman with womanly bossomers. In the midst of it all, Georgia's hilarious attempts to advise her friends and dye her hair has readers clutching their sides with laughter and anticipating the arrival of her next book.

Reason for Rejection: While Louise does a fairly excellent job describing the ignorance of teen sex and the frivolty of teenage years, I feel that this book does not really fulfill one of the most important aspects of young adult literature, which is that the character grows by the end of the book and becomes changed. Georgia's growth, while is an occurance that does happen, requires an entire series to take place. In addition, while the ignorance of Georgia and her friends is prevalent amongst most teens, there is no lesson or value to be gained from her story. It is a book that is purely for leisure.

Genre: Humor/Extra Credit