Gingerbread » (First Simon Pulse Edition)

Rachel Cohn is the author of critically-acclaimed YA novels Shrimp, Pop Princess, Gingerbread, and middle-grade novel The Steps. A graduate of Barnard College, she lives and writes in Manhattan. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is Rachel's first book for Knopf.

David Levithan is a children's book editor in New York City. The author lives in NYC; Hoboken, NJ.

"I have promised to be a model citizen daughter....I have confined my Shrimp time to making out with him in the Java the Hut supply closet and quick feels on the cold hard sand at the beach during our breaks, but enough is enough....Delia and I are planning a party at Wallace and Shrimp's house and I am spending the night whether Sid and Nancy notice or not. I will be as wild as I wanna be."

After being kicked out of a fancy New England boarding school, Cyd Charisse is back home in San Francisco with her parents, Sid and Nancy, in a household that drives her crazy. Lucky for Cyd, she's always had Gingerbread, her childhood rag doll and confidante.

After Cyd tests her parents' permissiveness, she is grounded in Alcatraz (as Cyd calls her room) and forbidden to see Shrimp, her surfer boyfriend. But when her incarceration proves too painful for the whole family, Cyd's parents decide to send her to New York to meet her biological father and his family, whom Cyd has always longed to know.

Summer in the city is not what Cyd Charisse expects — and Cyd isn't what her newfound family expects, either.

With Gingerbread, debut author Rachel Cohn creates a spirited world of in-your-face characters who are going to stay with readers for a long time.

Publishers Weekly

"The 16-year-old `recovering hellion' (as her stepfather refers to her), who narrates this debut novel, breathes a joie de vivre into this story of her bicoastal family," wrote PW in a starred review. "Her magnetic narrative will keep readers hooked." Ages 14-up. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.