Reviews for Big Mouth & Ugly Girl

The average rating for Big Mouth & Ugly Girl based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-11-07 00:00:00 Mike Camdon "Ugly Girl" is a high school student (aka Ursula Riggs) who has built up walls around herself. Walls that protect her from the insensitivity of others (including her own disinterested family), and from changes and emotions that she doesn't want to (or can't) deal with in her life. Ugly Girl isn't afraid of anyone, and doesn't care what anyone thinks about her. She has black or fiery moods, and depends on no one but herself. She's a Warrior. "Big Mouth" is another high school student - a boy named Matt Donaghy who talks too much, and sometimes says things that he shouldn't... words spill out of him without thinking. When Big Mouth "innocently" jokes about bombing his school, he quickly learns the consequences of speaking without thinking, and sees his life turned upside-down as he's suspended from school and investigated by the police. He learns who his real friends are. Strangely enough, one of them turns out to be Ugly Girl. As she comes to his aid, they learn a lot from each other. Ursula, a loner, reaches out to Matt to do what she believes is right. And in turn, Matt reaches back and helps Ursula to reconnect with things and people that she's left behind. In this novel - written for young adults by Joyce Carol Oates - everything extraneous is stripped away as two unlikely friends figure out what really matters, and they change from kids to young adults (and not the easy way). I thought it was pretty well-written, although at times Oates' terminology and slang seemed more like how she thought high school students would act and speak rather than how they really would (sometimes the dialogue seemed a little stilted to me). Also, I found it a little lacking in depth, and the story-lines wrapped up somewhat tidily at the end. I think that in a really good young adult novel, these issues can be dealt with in a way that doesn't seem like the author is taking things down a notch for the audience (teens rather than adults) and I found this novel wasn't quite at that level. I also wish Matt's character had been better developed, because Ursula's character pretty much blew him out of the water. There were definitely gems, though. I loved this part, by Ugly Girl: Life consist of facts, and facts are of two kinds: Boring, and Crucial. I figured this out for myself in eighth grade. Wish I could patent it! A Boring Fact is virtually any fact that doesn't concern you. Or it's just trivial. A nothing fact. (Like the annual rainfall in, let's say, Bolivia. Crucial to the Bolivians, but Boring to everyone else.) I know the Crucial Facts of Ugly Girl's life are Boring Facts to others. Yet, to Ugly Girl, they are Crucial. There's one test of a Crucial Fact: It hurts. All in all, a pretty good coming-of-age novel dealing with freedom (or the lack) of speech, and the ramifications of speaking carelessly in a world of zero-tolerance policies.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-21 00:00:00 Dante Jackson Give this book to every tween and teen you know. Adults, you should read it too. It's a fast read, a day or two at most, and the pages are filled with a sparse, honest prose that creates two characters who somehow manage to be outcasts and everygirl/boy at the same time. You know that teenage experience of feeling totally alone and different from everyone around you but then as an adult you realize everyone was feeling that way and so you were all actually together in that aloneness? This book explores that experience with kindness and sympathy. It's a book I wish I'd had at that age. Ugly Girl is accepted by some and rejected by most at her school, but her awesomeness is readily apparent to readers, and that's not because this book carries the trite, ham-fisted message to be nice to the outcasts, they are people too! It's because Joyce Carol Oates is so skilled at laying out the intricacies of Ugly Girl's personality in a subtle and truthful way -- from her fierce devotion to doing the right thing to her shaky, but deep confidence despite an outward uncertainty. Please read it, and remember that the teenagers you know have inner lives just as complex as any adult.