Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II

Quick repartee. Unsparing wit. Insight, poignancy, and spot-on characters. Welcome the much-awaited sequel to the acclaimed Stoner & Spaz. Beautiful but troubled Colleen Minou is the only girl who ever looked at Ben Bancroft as more than a spaz more than just that kid with cerebral palsy. Yet the more time Ben spends with her, the more glaring their differences appear. Is what Ben feels for Colleen actual affection, or more like gratitude? Then there's Amy (aka A.J.), who is everything Colleen isn't, and everything Ben's grandma wants for him: clean-cut and upper-class, academically driven, just as obsessed with filmmaking as Ben is. But what does A.J. see when she looks at Ben? CP? Or the person behind the twisted body? In Ron Koertge's sharp, darkly humorous follow-up to the award-winning Stoner & Spaz, Ben tries to come to terms with his confused feelings toward A.J. and his inimitable connection to Colleen, who is sometimes out of it, sometimes into him, and always exhilarating.

Ron Koertge is the author of many celebrated novels, including Stoner & Spaz, Strays, and The Brimstone Journals, all American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults; Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, an American Library Association Top Ten Sports Books for Youth Selection; and The Arizona Kid, an American Library Association pick for “one of the ten funniest books of the year.” A two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children's Literature, Ron Koertge lives in South Pasadena, California.