The Greater Rochester

Teen Book Festival

"To foster a community effort to celebrate and promote reading by connecting teens and authors."

Gail Giles
From Gail's Website:
Where it all started: "This is what happened. I was in the fourth grade. I wasn’t the best behaved kid in the fourth grade. I tended to do my class work at the speed of light and then, well, cause trouble. I went to Catholic school and the nuns disapproved of trouble.

Finally, the nun came to my desk, checked my work and changed my world. She told me that she was having a bad day and needed a laugh. Could I write her a funny story?

So, I wrote. And erased and wrote some more. And I handed it in. The nun took the paper and began reading. And she chuckled. Then she blushed. I guess because she had chuckled. Then she laughed right out loud.

Now, some people say the experience warped me. From that day to this, I can’t just look at something as it is. I see something, look at it from another angle, take it and compare it to something, change it a little, ask 'what if.'

That’s what makes a writer, I think. Taking an idea and flipping it over, turning it inside out, seeing if it has holes in it and if it doesn’t--wondering why not."

Books by Gail Giles
 

 

                                                                                                                    What Happened to Cass McBride?
Cass McBride is the most popular girl in school. So why would David, a loser with a capital L, ask Cass to go out with him? "What makes him think he can ask me?" Cass writes to her friend.  Kyle is David's older brother who protects him from an abusive mother who rants, screams, and bullies David until he has no hope left. Now Kyle has planned an extraordinarily cruel revenge on Cass McBride for David's death. But is Cass really to blame?

 

 

                                                                
                                                                                                                Playing in Traffic
Shy and unremarkable, seventeen-year-old Matt Lathrop is surprised and flattered to find himself singled out for the sexual attentions of the alluring Skye Colbly, until he discovers the evil purpose behind her actions.

 

                                                                                                                Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters
Fourteen-year-old Sunny is stunned when a total stranger shows up at her house posing as her older sister Jazz, who supposedly died out of town in a fire months earlier.

 

 

                                                                                                               Shattering Glass
When Rob, the charismatic leader of the senior class, turns the school nerd into Prince Charming, his actions lead to unexpected violence.