Going Nowhere Faster, written by Sean Beaudoin

Grade 8 Up—Seventeen-year-old Stan Smith, a chess champion and former child prodigy, shirks most of his scholarly and social responsibilities, instead choosing to spend his time working as an underpaid clerk in a video store. His hippie vegan parents, though well meaning, only embarrass him and make his self-defeating attempts to wrest control of his life all the more pathetic. Paths to recovery do surface only to be thwarted by one of the novel's offbeat characters or through Stan's own mistakes, which result in a seemingly directionless plot that eventually fizzles away.

Eggs, written by Jerry Spinelli

Nine-year-old David has been living with his grandmother since his mother's accidental death. Still in pain, he's determined not to make friends in his new town and not to make nice with his grandmother. Slowly, though, he forms a close albeit abrasive relationship with 13-year-old Primrose, whose single parent barely seems to notice when she moves into a nearby abandoned van. More kinship than friendship, the kids' bond draws them together and thrusts timid David into adventures from late-night treasure hunts in the neighbors' trash, to a highly competitive search for night crawlers, to an overnight hike to (or at least toward) Philadelphia. Funny, startling, and touching in turn, Spinelli's novel portrays two children, bereft and secretive, hurt and angry, who manage to give each other things that they need and cannot get--or won't accept--from the adults in their lives.