Word Nerd Book

Twelve-year-old Ambrose is a glass-half-full kind of guy. A self-described “friendless nerd,” he moves from place to place every couple of years with his overprotective mother, Irene. When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich — even though they know he has a deathly allergy — Ambrose is philosophical. Irene, however, is not and decides that Ambrose will be home-schooled.

Alone in the evenings when Irene goes to work, Ambrose pesters Cosmo, the twenty-five-year-old son of the Greek landlords who live upstairs. Cosmo has just been released from jail for breaking and entering to support a drug habit. Quite by accident, Ambrose discovers that they share a love of Scrabble and coerces Cosmo into taking him to the West Side Scrabble Club, where Cosmo falls for Amanda, the club director. Posing as Ambrose’s Big Brother to impress her, Cosmo is motivated to take Ambrose to the weekly meetings and to give him lessons in self-defense. Cosmo, Amanda, and Ambrose soon form an unlikely alliance and, for the first time in his life, Ambrose blossoms. The characters at the Scrabble Club come to embrace Ambrose for who he is and for their shared love of words. There’s only one problem: Irene has no idea what Ambrose is up to.

In this brilliantly observed novel, author Susin Nielsen transports the reader to the world of competitive Scrabble as seen from the honest yet funny viewpoint of a boy who’s searching for acceptance and for a place to call home.

From the Hardcover edition.

Children's Literature

If you want a first line that grabs the reader instantly, try this: "The day I almost died, the sky was a bright, brilliant blue." And how does twelve-year-old Ambrose almost die? A trio of school bullies plays a cruel prank involving his peanut addiction. Ambrose imagines the subsequent newspaper headline: "FRIENDLESS NERD KILLED BY PEANUT." It is hardly a scenario to make his neurotically overprotective mother relax her vigilance—nor is his growing friendship with their landlords' son Cosmo, an ex-con struggling to get over his drug addiction. Ambrose and Cosmo are both saved by an unlikely rescuer: the West Side Scrabble Club. Ambrose finds respect and camaraderie with his fellow "word nerds" and misfits, while Cosmo pursues the redeeming love of the club's attractive organizer. It all comes right in the end, give or take some pathological and escalating lies, drug dealers' schemes for violent revenge, and one desperate and doomed attempt at running away. Nielsen delivers a tour de force of a tween novel, complete with page-turning, heart-in-your-throat suspense, a cast of delightfully individuated and appealingly eccentric characters and, most of all, Ambrose's utterly distinct, wry, wise, naive, and altogether hilarious voice. Reviewer: Claudia Mills, Ph.D.