• Age: 10 to 17
• Grade: 5 to 10
• Reading age: 10 to 17

Melanie Brody is takes grade seven very seriously. She's read about junior high in all the teen magazines, and she's ready for all the romace and excitement Degrassi can offer.
Things don't turn out to be quite so glamorous as Melanie expects: it's hard to feel popular when you're scrawny and your hair won't go right, when it seems like everyone else has nicer clothes and the older students think you're a dumb kid. Life just isn't turning out like a romance novel at all.
Based on the groundbreaking Degrassi Junior High television series, this book offers a sensitive and engaging look at the challenges of teenage life.

Susin Nielsen got her start feeding cast and crew on the popular television series, Degrassi Junior High. They hated her food, but they saw a spark in her writing. Nielsen went on to pen sixteen episodes of the hit TV show. Since then, Nielsen has written for over 20 Canadian TV series. Her first young adult novel, Word Nerd, was published in 2008 to critical acclaim. It won multiple Young Readers’ Choice Awards, as did her second novel, Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom. Her third novel, The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen, was published in August 2012. It went on to win the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award, the Canadian Library Association’s Children’s Book of the Year Award, and a number of Young Readers’ Choice Awards. Author Wally Lamb named it his top YA pick for 2012 in his “First Annual Wally Awards,” and recently Rolling Stone magazine put it at #27 in their list of “Top 40 Best YA Novels.” Her books have been translated into multiple languages. Susin’s new novel, We Are All Made of Molecules, will be published in Canada, the US and the UK in Spring of 2015. She lives in Vancouver with her family and two naughty cats.

Susin Nielsen's profile page