A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
“Perfection itself is imperfection.” Vladimir Horowitz
“There is a lot of squealing when Emma opens her presents. First she gets some lip gloss, which she has to try on right away.
Joella Tinstella gasps, ‘You look like that the girl on The Beach!’ she says, and then everybody squeals and nods. Except me. I don’t watch The Beach.
Emma opens some gift cards and some CDs. More squealing.
And then Lily Parker gives her a red T-shirt that says BRAT in gold and Emma likes it so much she has to run to the bathroom to take off the pink Brat shirt she is wearing and put on Lily’s red Brat shirt and when she comes back into the media room and does this model pose thing, everyone squeals again.
And then she opens my present.
And she gets socks.
There is no squealing.
Emma stares at the socks. Then she shoves her hand into one of them, like she thinks that her real present must be inside. There is nothing inside except Emma’s hand.”
And so it goes. Ten-year-old Zoe Elias doesn’t quite have the perfect school social life, in fact she has none. She doesn’t have a best friend. She doesn’t have her dream piano and she will never live out her dream of playing Carnegie Hall. What she does have is a workaholic mother who is too busy to pay attention to her, a nervous father who is too afraid to leave the house and — an organ —a Perfectone D-60. Not quite the envy of every schoolgirl. Not quite the perfect life. But when she finds out the truth about her classmate Wheelers life she realizes that life isn’t about perfection, life is about living despite the imperfections, and a crooked kind of perfect life may just well be better than a perfect one. Zoe’s sarcasm makes A Crooked Kind of Perfect a humorous enjoyable read especially when you’re having a “life is not fair” day or “the grass is always greener” day.
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Thanks so much for including A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT on your blog. I hope your students enjoy reading it.
You know, writing this book was a little scary for me. I was worried that people wouldn’t like it and that I might make a fool of myself by trying to do something that maybe I didn’t have the skills and experience to do. I’m really glad that I overcame those fears and put the story on paper. After a number of revisions, I’m really really proud of the book and have received lots of mail from kids who have connected with it. I hope that your students connect with it, too!