My Name is Mackenzie Bly

A modern-day Adrian Mole about negotiating life today while struggling with the innate difficulty of being a teenage boy, from the inimitable Lissa Evans. Philip Stephens is fourteen and a half and lives in a small provincial town called Ipsley Castle. He has a good friend called Sy, and a dog called Boiler, and what he would most like to do is pass invisibly through adolescence. This, however, is difficult, because not only is he considerably taller and wider than the rest of his class, not only does he live with his two Mums, one of whom is the Head of Biology at his own school (and therefore responsible for teaching sex education to his class mates), not only is his Dad an amiable but highly visible local stoner, but his best and only friend Sy has gone to live in New Zealand. Philip has to negotiate being thirteen on his own, and over the course of a couple of terms, he finds and loses friends, has the world's most embarrassing holiday with his Mums, discovers his vocation and acquires what could almost be called a girlfriend. But it's destined to be a rocky ride...