Headlong »

KATHE KOJA is the author of several notable books for young adults that have been acclaimed for their psychological intensity, including The Blue Mirror and Buddha Boy, both ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and, most recently, Kissing the Bee. She lives near Detroit, Michigan.

What sets Vaughn apart is the quality of our girls. We do draw from all over, girls from every kind of background, girls for whom Vaughn is a major life experience. And not every girl is the right girl for Vaughn. You can often tell, early on, who these girls are.

The Vaughn School. Home of domed ceilings, gleaming checkerboard floors, and the Vaughn Virgins: the upper stratum of girls who have perfect grades, perfect lives, and perfect friends. Lily Noble is a lifer – she knows all the rules. Then sophomore year, Hazel Tobias arrives as a scholarship student, with her model’s looks and unconventional family, and shows Lily everything she’s been missing. Can you ever fit in someplace you don’t want to be? As Lily befriends Hazel, both girls discover what it means to dive deep beneath the surface – of friendship, of commitment – and to live life with all their hearts, with all they are, headlong.

Publishers Weekly

Class, identity and friendship are the intersecting subjects of this intelligent novel. Now that she's a sophomore and boarding on campus, daughter of privilege Lily Noble wonders if she's outgrown the Vaughan School-she feels restless with students, administration and even her boyfriend, who assume they know everything about her. With the entrance of scholarship student Hazel Tobias, raised by her much older photographer brother and his male partner, Lily finds both a new friend and a way to demonstrate her new subversiveness. Besides reliably recreating the dynamics of teen-girl friendship, Koja (Kissing the Bee) relays this story with her usual insight and, through her lightning-fast characterizations, an ability to project multiple perspectives simultaneously. The narrative jumps between the ongoing academic year and its end, a fractured chronology that shades each early encounter with extra significance. Brief reports or memos, mostly from various members of faculty and staff, remind readers that Lily is not always the best judge of her own behavior, and that it is up to the audience to fill in the openings that Koja shrewdly leaves. Ages 14-up. (Nov.)

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