Quagmire Tiarello Couldn't Be Better

Quag’s summer is nothing like he expects when suddenly he is thrown in with a bunch of Drama Geeks in an Art Camp at the YMCA in his small upstate New York town.(view spoiler)[ But then, his mother, in a full manic spin, barrels her car up on the sidewalk and absorbs Quag into her fevered ride west - across most o (hide spoiler)]......more

This book's plot variously brought to mind Choldenko's The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, DiCamillo's Louisiana's Way Home, and MacLachlan's Arthur, For the Very First Time, but as I mentioned in my previous update, this book's lodestar is Schmidt's Okay For Now. Once I realized that, it was so ha......more

Yet another teenager with a parent who can’t parent and who has to decide how to survive and who they can trust. The thing that stands out for me about this one is the bipolar representation and how scary it can be for a child to witness, and the rural setting of the latter part of the book. We need......more

Quag is looking forward to summer break, when he can sleep in and relax, and figure out when the new pizza place owner throws out the old pies. But all his plans fly out the window when his mom starts to go into one of her spins and then disappears, and the girl he likes invites him to join their li......more

There is so much to love about this book. It's beautifully written, and does a good job of capturing the unpredictability and frustration of loving someone with bipolar disorder (and I say this from experience). It's impossible not to be moved by Quag and the lengths he goes to to protect his mother......more