Stick Cover Reveal

I'm so excited to be one of the bloggers participating in this cover reveal! I simply cannot wait to read it!

Andrew Smith's personal description of the book:

"Stick is really all about how love doesn't weaken in the face of cruelty and ugliness -- it flourishes, no matter what. And I think that's the real idea behind the book. The main character, Stark McClellan, grows up in an environment where he is surrounded by ugliness and cruelty, but he still manages to see beauty and wonder in just about everything. There are lots of "snapshots" about love and relationships in the book -- and, being a kid, Stark really doesn't have the range of experiences to see the difference between the pure and the profane -- but he does learn the truth eventually.

There are gay teens in the book. I've always had an issue with people who use terms like "acting gay," because, to me, it's like saying "acting (insert stereotypical group here)." And there's no "act" about the characters in Stick. When I was a kid Stark's age, I learned that my older brother was gay, just like what happens to the kids in the book. That's really one of the big issues in the novel, which is based on personal experiences. I wanted to write a novel about being brothers, being kids, and having to contend with all the rules and limits that try to strain the bonds that connect us as human beings... and the fucked-up things people do to one another because they are incapable of seeing the huge things that really make us all the same. So I wrote this book about a kid who hears the world differently than other people, who is convinced that he's ugly and defective, but who holds on to this most amazing sense of wonder about everything that goes on around him.

I have a feeling that some people will be offended by the loving relationship between the gay kids and how totally screwed up and cruel some of the married parents in the book turn out to be, like that doesn't happen in real life. Oh well."