Author Ron Koertge has not forgotten what it feels like to be young. The heroes of his stories for young adults suffer anxieties over bad complexions or feeling shorter than average. They ponder their futures and quarrel with eccentric or domineering parents. Most of all, they learn how to manage their physical longings and their romantic impulses as they become seriously involved with girls they care about. While Koertge frequently uses humor to reveal a character, he never downplays the seriousness of these universal adolescent concerns. Jane Hoogestraat, in an essay for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, commented that Koertge has made a name for himself with books that are "remarkable for the realism with which they present tough and not-so-tough teenage characters coming of age in a world of AIDS and widespread divorce, but often in a world in which tenderness and love are not absent."

Koertge...