Alt Ed

Susan Calloway, bullied and overweight, faces daily humiliation at the hands of her classmates—and she's had enough. With her anger about to reach the boiling point, Susan lands in an alternative education class, a sort of group therapy for the nearly expelled. School is bad enough, but facing off with five peers, including her cruelest tormentor, is worse. Now Susan is being forced to do something she's always avoided—talk about herself and listen to what other people have to say about her. She has two choices: find her voice, or be prepared to take the insults in silence. It won't be easy, but alt ed may be just the last resort Susan needs.

“Carefully nuanced connections between characters plus insight into the adolescent ability to use low self-esteem as a cruel weapon catapults Atkins's novel of troubled teens well above the familiarity of its trappings. Each of Atkins's characters emerges, fully formed from these pages.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Diane Tuccillo

Susan Callahan is overweight and constantly tormented at Wayne High. When she witnesses Brendan, a gay classmate who has been subjected to similar treatment, trashing the prized truck of a campus bully, she eggs him on.  Both are caught, and Susan shares the blame. They find themselves in required after-school counseling with four other teens in trouble. Kyle, the owner of the truck; Randy, a handsome jock; Amber, a girl with a bad reputation and a soft heart; and Tracee, a cheerleader with religious convictions. Susan is terrified to participate, and the others balk.  Guidance counselor-instructor Mr. Duffy, however, encourages them to open up, allowing extremely frank and sometimes coarse discussions, revelations, and language. Amber, for example, divulges her drunken party experience being sexually used by multiple boys. There are no group ground rules except to keep class confidentiality. Eventually, the group reveals the reasons they were forced to attend the class, and they change for the better. Susan decides to dress more attractively, get exercise and lose some weight, become friends with Brendan, and stand up for herself. She reaches out to her distant father, a coach at the high school, and her older brother who has been embarrassed by her, and comes to terms with her mother s death.