Story of a Girl --a novel by Sara Zarr

This amazing first novel by author Sara Zarr begins like this:
"I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy's Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night. Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darren.
I didn't love him. I'm not sure I even liked him.

The car was cold and Tommy was stoned and we'd been doing pretty much the same thing a dozen times before, and I could smell the salt air from the beach, and in my head I wrote the story of a girl who surfed the cold green ocean, when one day she started paddling in the wrong direction and didn't know it until she looked back and couldn't see the shore."
In a brief moment, Deanna Lambert's life is changed forever, at home, at school, and in her own mind and heart. This is the powerful story of her longing and her exertions to escape a life that is defined by one past indiscretion.

This is definitely a book for older teens.

www.teachingtolerance.org is hot!

Here's a source that teachers, parents and kids can use to find lots of great information, ideas and activities for school, home and community that will help to promote tolerance, understanding and respect. In the latest issue of TEACHING TOLERANCE, the magazine produced the Southern Poverty Law Center, you will find timely articles and outlines for discussing size acceptance ( no more "fatso" name-calling), the need for gay-straight alliances, and breaking stereotypes.
And, the project has a new, free storybook called RHINOS AND RAZZBERRIES to encourage tolerance and respect in children as young as four. You can download an orderform at www.teachingtolerance.org/rhinos.

And don't forget to sign up for a subscription to the magazine so you'll get every issue at www.teachingtolerance.org.