HARD TIME

A “hard time” is what Thompson gives the grown-ups in this droll tale of two teenagers discovering that no good deed goes unpunished. Thanks to a story in her high school’s literary magazine featuring a dead teacher, Annie Ireland finds herself sentenced to five days in the local lockup as an “example,” then bundled off to a wilderness camp for hard-core offenders, and ultimately locked up in an underground behavior-mod cell. Fortunately, she has two loyal, if distinctly unconventional, allies: best friend Nemo Skank, nicknamed Arby, for “Roach Boy” (don’t ask); and Pantagruel Primo, a gnome temporarily inhabiting the body of a baby doll assigned to Annie’s care in Life Skills class. As usual, the author contrasts decent, levelheaded teens with savagely caricatured adults, meanwhile using the former (plus, in this case, Primo) as mouthpieces to dispense commonsense advice about coping with the perils of adolescence. Thanks to a wacky cast and situations that sometimes take an ominous turn, that advice never turns over-earnest—and Annie and Arby, a likable couple if ever there was one, come through it all triumphantly, wiser but not at all sadder. (Fiction. YA)