The Real Us Blog Tour

We all need a little more humor in our lives, right? Our students need to laugh just as much as they need to learn to read, write, and problem solve!  

Welcome to my stop on the Blog Tour for The Real Us! Check out some information about the book and a guest post by the author himself! 

The Real Us
by Tommy Greenwald (Goodreads Author), Lauren Burniac (Editor), J.P. Coovert (Illustrations)
Hardcover, 224 pages
Expected publication: August 8th 2017 by Roaring Brook Press
ISBN 1626721718 (ISBN13: 9781626721715)

Publisher’s description
Laura Corbett and Damian White are loners, and not by choice. Kids make fun of smart, sarcastic Laura for her weight and artistic Damian for his tendency to sweat through his shirts. Calista Getz, however―well, everyone agrees that Calista is the prettiest girl in the whole school. Maybe even the whole state. Let’s just say that she sits at the popular lunch table. Laura and Damian don’t.

But when Calista wakes up just before the school dance with the BIGGEST pimple she has EVER seen right in the middle of her face, and her attempts to hide it backfire spectacularly, Laura and Damian are the only ones who don't ignore her. In fact, they seem to see not only past her pimple, but past her popularity, too. Together, they'll challenge the school's status quo in this hilarious, heartfelt novel The Real Us, by Tommy Greenwald.

Let's hear from the author about why he wrote this book....

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WE ALL HAVE BLEMISHES

A beautiful girl with a giant pimple in the middle of her nose.

That’s the first thing that popped into my head -- no pun intended, I swear! -- when I embarked on the story that became THE REAL US.

This was a few years ago, and up to that point, all the middle-grade novels I written – the Charlie Joe Jackson series and its spinoffs, the Crimebiters! series – had a broadly comic bent to them. So naturally, as I dove in to this new story, I assumed that I would go down a similarly humorous path. But interestingly, I soon enough found myself writing a (slightly) more serious book about friendship, self-identity and the limits and labels we put on ourselves, and others, throughout our middle school years.

These are issues that I’ve always been fascinated by: it traces back to when I was a kid myself, trying to straddle the worlds between music (I was a pianist and percussionist) and sports (I played soccer). It wasn’t easy, because each of those worlds was so self-contained, and all-consuming. And then I saw it in my three boys, Charlie, Joe and Jack, who each found a world to belong to in school, and then found it difficult when they were interested in exploring beyond the boundaries of that world.

Add the extra complication of looks into it – how the “attractive” kids are expected to act a certain way and hang around with a certain kind of person (namely, each other), and how the “less attractive” kids are supposed to stay in their lane and know their place – and you’ve suddenly got the makings of a story that could go in a lot of different directions. And I was interesting in following those directions and seeing where they took me.

I loved creating Calista, Damian and Laura – the heroes of THE REAL US. My goal was to make them funny, confused, complicated and real, or at least as real as fictional people can be.

But don’t worry. Calista – the beautiful one – still gets the giant pimple in the middle of her nose.

You didn’t think I was gonna let that one go, did you?

Check out the rest of the tour!
7 August Ms. Yingling Reads, http://msyinglingreads.blogspot.com review
8 August Maria’s Melange http://www.mariaselke.com/ —Why I Wrote The Real Us
9 August Log Cabin Library http://logcabinlibrary.blogspot.com/ Review, publisher’s description
10 August- Diary of a Happy Librarian https://diaryofahappylibrarian.blogspot.com/- Review
11 August Always in the Middle https://gpattridge.com/ Make ‘Em Laugh
14 August- Randomly Reading https://randomlyreading.blogspot.com/ Review
15 August One Great Book http://onegreatbook.com/ Review
16 August-Unleashing Readers http://www.unleashingreaders.com Giveaway
17 August Mr. D. Reads https://misterdreads.wordpress.com. Interview
18 August Tommy Greenwald http://tommygreenwald.com/blog/ Giveaway