Ten Miles Past Normal

Dowell, Frances O'Roark. (2011). Ten miles past normal. New York: Atheneum. Fourteen-year-old Janie Gorman is tired of living on the small farm where her family has lived for the past few years. Although she enjoys milking the goats, somewhat inexplicably named for country singers Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, and Kitty Wells, she doesn't enjoy sometimes tracking in their waste products, especially on the first day of school. The pungent smell insures that Janie leaves a fragrant memory on the bus, something her classmates won't let her live down. At the heart of the matter, all Janie wants is to have a normal high school life. Still, that isn't too likely, given that her mother is a popular back to nature blogger who sometimes writes about her daughter and since she's been assigned a lunch period when none of her friends from middle school are assigned. Sadly, Janie heads to the school library during lunch and befriends another newbie named Verbena. What's a girl to do to be considered normal once her reputation has been established based on one misstep?

Janie has more on her side than she realizes. Her best friend Sarah defends her and gets her involved in curricular and extracurricular projects that she would otherwise have shunned. For instance, when Sarah considers playing the bass in order to get to know their mutual heartthrob better, Janie is the one who decides to follow through, leading to a friendship--and maybe more--with a guy called Monster. Janie also suggests interviewing two neighbors who turn out to have been involved in the Freedom Schools during the Civil Rights Movement. The harder she tries to be like everyone else, the more Janie realizes that there are advantages to being on the fringe, and being true to the person she is becoming may mean standing up for herself in unexpected ways.

Janie's journey to self-acceptance is one with which most teen readers can relate since the truth is right in front of her all along even though it takes her awhile to see it. I longed for more stories from the heroic Mr. Pritchard and Mrs. Brown, and was pleased to see that Janie learned something from their examples as well as from Monster's own self-confidence. Maybe being normal isn't all that it's cracked up to be.


Favorite Lines:

“He has this way of talking after we’ve visited Mr. Pritchard that reminds you he grew up in Rome, Georgia, that my dad is, in fact, a redneck for peace. At other times, while you’d never mistake my dad for, say, a native New Yorker, his southern roots sort of hide under his tweed jackets and professor’s briefcase ”(p. 34).

“When I get off the phone I feel oddly refreshed, like I’ve just returned from a hike in the woods on a cool autumn afternoon” (p. 107).

“Just wait until I tell Sarah that Prince Charming isn’t such a prince after all” (p. 127).