Word Nerd by Susin Nielsen

Word Nerd by Susin Nielsen

Twelve-year-old Ambrose is a glass-half-full kind of guy. A self-described "friendless nerd," he moves from place to place every couple of years with his overprotective mother, Irene. When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich -- even though they know he has a deathly allergy -- Ambrose is philosophical. Irene, however, is not and decides that Ambrose will be home-schooled.

Alone in the evenings when Irene goes to work, Ambrose pesters Cosmo, the twenty-five-year-old son of the Greek landlords who live upstairs. Cosmo has just been released from jail for breaking and entering to support a drug habit. Quite by accident, Ambrose discovers that they share a love of Scrabble and coerces Cosmo into taking him to the West Side Scrabble Club, where Cosmo falls for Amanda, the club director. Posing as Ambrose's Big Brother to impress her, Cosmo is motivated to take Ambrose to the weekly meetings and to give him lessons in self-defense. Cosmo, Amanda, and Ambrose soon form an unlikely alliance and, for the first time in his life, Ambrose blossoms. The characters at the Scrabble Club come to embrace Ambrose for who he is and for their shared love of words. There's only one problem: Irene has no idea what Ambrose is up to.

In this brilliantly observed novel, author Susin Nielsen transports the reader to the world of competitive Scrabble as seen from the honest yet funny viewpoint of a boy who's searching for acceptance and for a place to call home.

Susin Nielsen, a Gemini Award winner, got her start on the popular television series Degrassi Junior High, feeding cast and crew muffins and bologna sandwiches. They despised her cooking (a fact immortalized in a poem written by the cast: An tribute to Susin, the Bran Muffin Queen, we eat them, die, and turn green). Fortunately for Susin, they recognized a potential in a spec script she had written. Nielsen went on to write sixteen episodes of the hit TV show as well as four books in the Degrassi franchise. Since then, Nielsen has written and story-edited a number of TV shows, including Ready or Not, Madison, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Edgemont, and two animated series, What About Mimi and Braceface, for which he has won two Canadian Screenwriter Awards.

She is the co-creator and showrunner of the critically acclaimed series Robson Arms, as well as co-creator and showrunner of the pre-school series Franny's Feet. She also made a TV series out on author Susan Juby's book, Alice, I Believe. Hank and Fergus, which won the Christie's Silver Medal Award, Mormor Moves In, and The Magic Beads are three of Nielsen's children's books. She and her husband, Goran, live in Vancouver with their son, Oskar, and cat, Sam.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780887769900
ISBN 10	088776990X
Title	Word Nerd
Author	Susin Nielsen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Tundra Books
Year published	2010-05-11
Number of pages	264
Prizes	Winner of Red Maple Award 2010, Nominated for Canadian Library Association - Book of the Year for Children 2008
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.