Charmeljun Gallardo

Ready For The World - Driver's Education Charmeljun Gallardo

"When you're a teenager, there's nothing you dread more than the first day back to school." But as a first-year sophomore in high school in 1986, 16-year-old Brandon Delacruz knows he's the little fish in an ocean full of sharks and barracudas. So begins author Charmeljun Gallardo's alluring story in the first book, Driver's Education, in his Ready For the World four-book series which chronicles the love, laughter, heartache-and yes, sometimes, tragedy-that is the high school years, bookended in the middle of the 1980s."Nothing summarized what high school life was like more succinctly than lunch. What you did in those forty minutes between fourth and fifth period defined your value as a person. If a high school day was a boxing match, then lunch was when everyone went to their corners. The headbangers were near the parking lot under their cloud of smoke. The marching band sat in the band room so they could practice. The cheerleaders and jocks sat together in the middle of the quad so they could be seen. And the geeks and nerds retreated to the library so they wouldn't be." Gallardo masterfully weaves a story that is timeless, bringing together elements of finding oneself, experiencing love and loss, and surviving the perils of being a teenager on the cusp of young adulthood. Mix in falling in love with your best friend and it's a recipe for disaster, or at least an awkwardness that knows no bounds."Being a couple in high school was like getting a backstage pass at a concert. There was an exclusive world that you became a part of that you wouldn't have known about otherwise. When you're in a relationship, you always had someone to walk with between classes. You always had someone else to sit with at lunch. You had a partner in group projects. Parties were more fun. The sappy love songs on the radio had deeper meanings to them. In other words, when you were part of a couple, high school was awesome. But if you weren't...well, you were us."Filled with nods to 80s nostalgia that will delight adult readers and give YA readers a pass to be amused at their parents' era, Driver's Education and its follow-up Superstar will strike a chord for anyone wanting to reminisce about, or commiserate in, the ups and downs, wonder and bittersweetness, that is the formative high school years.