[The Teen Book Scene Blog Tour] C.Lee McKenzie Teenage Garage Sale!

Hi everyone!

We have the lovely author of The Princess of Las Pulgas, C.Lee McKenzie doing a guest post for us on things we’d find if she were to have a garage sale of items from her teenage years.

Wanna know what she picked? Read on!
(They made me laugh out loud, really. What an odd combination of stuff!)

This guest post is based on a survey of my teen garage. I should send you a picture, but I'm afraid someone who knows me might see it!

How about some old cross-country skis? They have to be worth $5? How about $3? Okay $2. That's my last price.

Then there's this rare sculpture from one of my many journeys--can't remember where I went, and I certainly can't remember why I bought this, uh, this . . . well, it's about 10 inches tall, round at the bottom, slender at the top. When you shake it there's some rattling that happens. I could part with it for .50.

How about some duct tape? Yes, as a teen I once invested in mega amounts of it. The local hardware store had a sale and I must have thought in case of a disaster I could duct tape stuff (roof, doors, windows) together and survive until help came. In other words, I have duct tape and more duct tape. You could have it at the very special price of .25/roll. Do you have a few hundred dollars on you? If so, take the lot.

I'll let one slightly used volleyball go very cheaply due to a small leak. It may look flat, but if you buy the air pump next to it you'll have it inflated in no time. $1 and it's a set you'll appreciate.

The slightly post-teen PC with keyboard and chunky monitor is a steal at $10. I'll throw in WordPerfect. (Stop laughing, okay. This is a serious garage sale.)

One snorkel and one fin. The other fin is somewhere off the coast of Costa Rica. And to show how much I appreciate your business, I'll donate this well-traveled swim gear along with all that duct tape you're buying. Deal?

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I have reviewed this book as part of The Teen Book Scene Blog Tour. If you are interested to find out what I think of the book, click HERE. (I gave it 5 stars!)

The Princess of Las Pulgas by C. Lee McKenzie

November 28th 2010 by Westside Books
Buy: Amazon | Book Depository

About the book:

After her father's slow death from cancer, Carlie thought things couldn't get worse. But now, she is forced to confront the fact that her family in dire financial straits. To stay afloat, her mom has had to sell their cherished oceanfront home and move Carlie and her younger brother Keith to the other side of the tracks to dreaded Las Pulgas, or "the fleas" in Spanish. They must now attend a tough urban high school instead of their former elite school, and on Carlie's first day of school, she runs afoul of edgy K.T., the Latina tattoo girl who's always ready for a fight, even on crutches. Carlie fends off the attention of Latino and African American teen boys, and one, a handsome seventeen-year-old named Juan, nicknames her Princess when he detects her aloof attitude towards her new classmates. What they don't know is that Carlie isn't really aloof; she's just in mourning for her father and almost everything else that mattered to her. Mr. Smith, the revered English teacher who engages all his students, suggests she'll like her new classmates if she just gives them a chance; he cajoles her into taking over the role of Desdemona in the junior class production of Othello, opposite Juan, after K.T. gets sidelined. Keith, who becomes angrier and more sullen by the day, spray paints insults all over the gym as he acts out his anger over the family's situation and reduced circumstances. Even their cat Quicken goes missing, sending Carlie and Keith on a search into the orchard next to their seedy garden apartment complex. They're met by a cowboy toting a rifle who ejects them at gunpoint from his property. But when Carlie finds him amiably having coffee with their mom the next day -- when he's returned her cat -- she begins to realize that nothing is what it seems in Las Pulgas.