The first novel in children’s book author Carol Gorman’s Dork trilogy is Dork in Disguise (1999). Set in a generic middle school, the series follows the attempts of a brainy, science-loving preteen boy to navigate his identity as a “dork.” In the opening novel of the series, the main character tries his best to shed his nerdy image and becomes one of the cool kids at his new school instead. Predictably, completely transforming one’s personality to suit others backfires spectacularly in the end, teaching the protagonist the value of being true to who you are. Despite mixed reviews, Dork in Disguise won several prizes, including the Mark Twain Award. In his former school, sixth-grader Jerry Flack was always known as a dork. Kids teased him because of his love of science, his need to wear glasses, and his good grades. Even though the nickname bothered Jerry, he never really let go of his true passions, going as far as conducting his own experiments in his free time. Nevertheless, when his family moves to a new city where he has the chance to start over, Jerry decides to dedicate himself to eradicating his dork status. Fearing the same social rejection he experienced before, Jerry plans to create a fundamentally different persona for himself: a cool guy who doesn’t care about school and is great at rollerblading. In his first few days at Nathaniel Hawthorne Middle School, Jerry goes all out. He studies magazines and TV shows to figure out how to gel his hair, doing his best to pretend to be someone else. Almost immediately, he meets a girl named Brenda. Sweet, helpful, and kind, Brenda is a loud and proud nerd who has no problems with her image. She calls Jerry out for trying too hard, letting him know that she recognizes what he is trying to do. Not only that—she is willing to help. With Brenda’s help, Jerry improves his cool-guy appearance. She helps him rip his jeans the right way, works with him on changing his normal walk into a ne’er-do-well swagger, and together they dissect the things that the school’s popular kids do so that Jerry can adopt their mannerisms. This training works well in the beginning. Even though Jerry always has to be on guard so that his normal self doesn’t slip out accidentally, he manages to impress Craig, his tough-guy troublemaking locker partner. Craig is part of the popular crowd, so once he vouches for Jerry’s coolness, the other kids in that clique tenuously accept Jerry as one of their own. Jerry does everything he can to hold onto his newfound status. Unfortunately, the lengths he goes to straddle the line between idiotic and dangerous. He stops wearing his glasses, walking around barely able to see his way. He stops raising his hand in class to play down his intelligence, and when his teachers call on him, Jerry pretends not to know the answers to any of their questions. Imitating the coolest guy in the school, Gabe, Jerry starts making nasty and rude jokes to get attention and show off. He also talks a big game about his rollerblading prowess—a problem, because this lie needs to be backed up with all kinds of other lies to excuse the fact that Jerry actually has no idea how to skate and so can never demonstrate his supposed skills in public. Jerry has a crush on the school’s most popular girl, Cinnamon. Gabe also likes Cinnamon, who loves that Gabe is so incredibly cool. The more time he spends obsessing over Cinnamon and over the rest of the cool crowd, the more Jerry blows off Brenda, constantly breaking plans they had to get together and hang out. Eventually, the stress of his double life starts catching up with Jerry. He finds it hard to flawlessly maintain his fake persona—all the lies are exhausting. He also grows jealous of Brenda and her friends getting to learn interesting things as part of the school’s science team. Jerry would love to also participate in the Science Competition but worries that the cool kids would make fun of him for it. Is it possible that Jerry misses being himself? Unwilling to give up everything he has built, Jerry writes a song for Cinnamon, managing to impress her enough that she starts to like him back. With the end of year spring carnival coming up, Jerry asks Cinnamon to go as his date, and she agrees. During the carnival, Cinnamon calls Brenda a dork to her face, and Jerry realizes that the cool crowd he has been working so hard to join is actually full of mean and shallow kids. Rethinking the year, Jerry realizes that the only truly fun times he had were when he and Brenda spent time together. She is easy to be with and likes him for himself. The more he compares Brenda to Cinnamon and her crew, the more Jerry realizes that he actually has had feelings for Brenda all along. Jerry apologizes sincerely to Brenda for repeatedly ditching her. He then opens up about his feelings, about wanting to get away from the cool kids, and about how he now knows that the only cool person he has met in his new school is Brenda. The novel ends on a happy note: Brenda’s group of friends accept Jerry, he joins the science team and gets to be a part of the Science Competition, and he and Brenda start dating.

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Carol Gorman

Middle grade

Novella

Fiction

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