Eleanor & Park: Exclusive Special Edition

#1 New York Times Best Seller!\n\n"Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it's like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it's like to be young and in love with a book."-John Green, The New York Times Book Review\n\nBono met his wife in high school, Park says.\nSo did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers.\nI'm not kidding, he says.\nYou should be, she says, we're 16.\nWhat about Romeo and Juliet?\nShallow, confused, then dead.\nI love you, Park says.\nWherefore art thou, Eleanor answers.\nI'm not kidding, he says.\nYou should be.\n\nSet over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits-smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love-and just how hard it pulled you under. \n\nA New York Times Best Seller!\nA 2014 Michael L. Printz Honor Book for Excellence in Young Adult Literature\nEleanor & Park is the winner of the 2013 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Best Fiction Book. \nA Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of 2013 \nA New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2013\nA Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2013\nAn NPR Best Book of 2013\n\nEditorial Reviews\n\n...I have never seen anything quite like Eleanor & Park. Rainbow Rowell's first novel for young adults is a beautiful, haunting love story...Its observational precision and richness make for very special reading...Evocative sensual descriptions are everywhere in this novel, but they always feel true to the characters...Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it's like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it's like to be young and in love with a book.\n- The New York Times Book Review - John Green\n\nHalf-Korean sophomore Park Sheridan is getting through high school by lying low, listening to the Smiths (it's 1986), reading Alan Moore's Watchmen comics, never raising his hand in class, and avoiding the kids he grew up with. Then new girl Eleanor gets on the bus. Tall, with bright red hair and a dress code all her own, she's an instant target. Too nice not to let her sit next to him, Park is alternately resentful and guilty for not being kinder to her. When he realizes she's reading his comics over his shoulder, a silent friendship is born. And slowly, tantalizingly, something more. Adult author Rowell (Attachments), making her YA debut, has a gift for showing what Eleanor and Park, who tell the story in alternating segments, like and admire about each other. Their love is believable and thrilling, but it isn't simple: Eleanor's family is broke, and her stepfather abuses her mother. When the situation turns dangerous, Rowell keeps things surprising, and the solution--imperfect but believable--maintains the novel's delicate balance of light and dark. Ages 13-up. Agent: Christopher Schelling, Selectric Artists. (Mar.)\n- Publishers Weekly\n\nFunny, hopeful, foulmouthed, sexy, and tear-jerking, this winning romance will captivate teen and adult readers alike." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)\n\n"Rowell keeps things surprising, and the solution maintains the novel's delicate balance of light and dark." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)\n\n"The pure, fear-laced, yet steadily maturing relationship Eleanor and Park develop is urgent and breathtaking and, of course, heartbreaking, too." -Booklist (starred review)\n\n"An honest, heart-wrenching portrayal of imperfect but unforgettable love." -The Horn Book (winner of The Horn Book Award for fiction)\n\n"Rowell's humor, tenderness, and sense of detail are extraordinary." -Curtis Sittenfeld for The New Yorker\n\n"Eleanor & Park is a breathless, achingly good read about love and outsiders." -Stephanie Perkins, New York Times bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door\n\n"Sweet, gritty, and affecting . . . Rainbow Rowell has written an unforgettable story about two misfits in love. This debut will find its way into your heart and stay there." -Courtney Summers, author of This Is Not a Test and Cracked Up to Be\n\n"In her rare and surprising exploration of young misfit love, Rowell shows us the beauty in the broken." -Stewart Lewis, author of You Have Seven Messages\n\n"Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it's like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it's like to be young and in love with a book." -John Green, The New York Times Book Review\n\n"Rowell's writing swings from profane to profound, but it's always real and always raw." -Petra Mayer for NPR Books\n- From the Publisher\n\nAwkward, prickly teens find deep first love in 1980s Omaha. Eleanor and Park don't meet cute; they meet vexed on the school bus, trapped into sitting together by a dearth of seats and their low social status. Park, the only half-Korean fan of punk and New Wave at their high school, is by no means popular, but he benefits from his family's deep roots in their lower-middle-class neighborhood. Meanwhile, Eleanor's wildly curly red mane and plus-sized frame would make her stand out even if she weren't a new student, having just returned to her family after a year of couch-surfing following being thrown out by her odious drunkard of a stepfather, Richie. Although both teens want only to fade into the background, both stand out physically and sartorially, arming themselves with band T-shirts (Park) and menswear from thrift stores (Eleanor). Despite Eleanor's resolve not to grow attached to anything, and despite their shared hatred for clichés, they fall, by degrees, in love. Through Eleanor and Park's alternating voices, readers glimpse the swoon-inducing, often hilarious aspects of first love, as well as the contrast between Eleanor's survival of grim, abuse-plagued poverty and Park's own imperfect but loving family life. Funny, hopeful, foulmouthed, sexy and tear-jerking, this winning romance will captivate teen and adult readers alike. (Fiction. 14 & up)\n- Kirkus Reviews