Merit Badges (New Issues Poetry & Prose)

Winner of the AWP Award for the NovelTop 10 Reasons You Should Read Merit Badges:1. Junior high is funny when it happens to someone else.2. You were a Boy Scout.3. Owning the book might make people think you were a Boy Scout.4. Lost is no longer on television.5. Minnisapa, Minnesota might be a lot like your hometown.6. You like lists.7. Your adolescence lasted twenty years, too.8. There aren't any vampires.9. It has that 'new-book' smell.10. Because if you don't, you re a dube.Prepare to encounter loss and love, sex and drugs, sitcoms and bowling. Follow four friends as they move from The Brady Bunch to Seinfeld, from junior high to middle management. There is Quint, whose rebellion frays into self-destruction; Slow, who struggles to become the world s first teenage father figure; Chimes, who fears losing his friends while picking up a 7-10 split; and Barb who escapes the conformity of Minnisapa only to find herself returning by dark of night. You will feel as if you ve always lived in Minnisapa, Minnesota. And you will never underestimate nice kids from the Midwest again.