Skinny White Freak...
Los Angeles. Summer of 1978. Skateboarding and tanned bodies rule the SoCal landscape. Compared to other kids, 13-year-old Adam Lipsitz is an outcast. He is too skinny, too pale, too brainy. To make matters worse, just as his parents are separating, he's cast off to a local sleepaway camp, where he is relentlessly tormented by a bully named "Worm" for six interminable weeks. How Adam deals with being bullied forms the central question of Skinny White Freak. He finds hope in unexpected places -- diary entries, a sympathetic girl, and whimsical self-penned doodles, which include an alter-ego superhero named Ultra-Violet Man who destroys Worm. Ultimately, Adam learns not to let others define him. By summer's end, he makes the journey from kid to young adult, replacing fear with courage, cynicism with empathy, and low self-esteem with self-acceptance.
Yours truly at 13 -- the inspiration for lead character Adam. Hard to tell me from the stick!
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