The Prep And The Punk

For fans of Jeff Zentner and Katie Henry comes a thrilling and funny debut about a teen raised in a doomsday community who plots her escape with the boy from the bunker next door. Always be ready for the worst day of your life. This is the mantra that Becca Aldaine has grown up with. Her family is part of a community of doomsday preppers, a neighborhood that prioritizes survivalist training over class trips or senior prom. They’re even arranging Becca’s marriage with Roy Kang, the only eligible boy in their community. Roy is a nice guy, but he’s so enthusiastic about prepping that Becca doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s planning to leave as soon as she can earn a full ride to a college far, far away. Then a devastating accident rocks Becca’s family and pushes the entire community, including Becca’s usually cynical little sister, deeper into the doomsday ideology. With her getaway plans thrown into jeopardy, the only person Becca can turn to is Roy, who reveals that he’s not nearly as clueless as he’s been pretending to be. When Roy proposes they run away together, Becca will have to risk everything—including her heart—for a chance to hope for the best instead of planning for the worst.

Living in a senior boys' dorm at a co-ed school, Sarah Chase was able to witness the inner workings of student culture and power of individual agency. She examines the price of privilege and uncovers how student culture reflects and perpetuates society and institutional power structures and gender ideologies.

A Beginner’s Guide to Special Makeup Effects, Volume 2 builds on the foundations covered in A Beginner's Guide to Special Makeup Effects: Monsters, Maniacs and More, introducing more professional-level materials and techniques and preparing readers for the next steps in their career. This book is divided into two sections: Paint and Buildups and Prosthetics. The first section shows a variety of characters created using two-dimensional painting techniques and materials that can be built up right on the skin, while the second section teaches how to apply a variety of store-bought prosthetics. Foam latex, silicone and prosthetic transfers are all covered. Each character is introduced with a full-page photograph of the finished makeup and illustrated with full-color, step-by-step photographs. The makeup tutorials in this book are designed to build on the lessons learned in the previous chapters, allowing readers to gradually expand on their skill set. The book also includes instruction on airbrushing, applying fake tattoos, making bald caps, PAX paint, wig application and a variety of other materials and skills. Five appendices cover topics including building a makeup kit, photographing your work and getting jobs as a makeup artist. This is practical, easy-to-follow makeup book is suited for students of stage makeup courses, as well as for the theatre technician working and training on their own.

Four suburban New Jersey students from the Leo R. Gittleman Jewish Day School form a rock band that becomes inexplicably popular, creating exhiliration, friction, confrontation, and soul-searching among its members.

Bernie Bridges and his Rotten School friends win a trip to a local prep school to compete in the National School Make-A-Great-Invention Contest.

In these raw, uncompromising stories, author George K. Ilsley explores the thin line between love and hate, and the outer parameters of desire that can both heal and destroy. Random Acts of Hatred infiltrates the dark confines of decidedly queer sensibilities, in which young men are undone by self-loathing and the powers-that-be, begging the question: What happens when people know they are hated? And yet in between the primal fantasies and bitter ironies are images of humor and light: the wayward families, the unspoken gestures and the faces in the -mirror—of posers and dreamers, saints and demons. Both gay and straight, they suggest a new definition of masculine power as a field with two poles, dissonant and equal at the same time. Evocative of Dennis Cooper and David Wojnarowicz, Random Acts of Hatred collects the fragments of a disintegrated generation, numbed yet empowered by their varied, inexplicable desires. Praise for Random Acts of Hatred: “In twelve sharp stories, George K. Ilsley grabs you by the heart and drags you around, saying, “Look at this mess.” He shames us with detail, and embarasses us with a dark honesty. Ilsley makes you bear witness to these Random Acts of Hatred then dares you to forget them.”—Michael V. Smith, author of Cumberland “There are echoes throughout of Dennis Cooper’s poetic depravity, of A.M. Homes’ ironic eroticism, and even of Bernard Cooper’s memorish emotionalism—but Ilsley’s lucid prose is infused with invigorating originality . . . quite a range, evident in every one of these accomplished pieces.”—Richard Labonte George K. Ilsley’s stories have been published in many anthologies and magazines. He has biked around the Adriatic, hitchhiked to Mexico, ambled through the Himalayas, and taught English in Tokyo. He now lives in Vancouver.

It goes without saying that identity has long been a recurrent topic in studies of American culture. The struggle between group sameness and individual uniqueness is a common issue in understanding diversity in the United States on several levels—including how our differences have not always resulted in national celebration. Terms such as “hybridity,” “performativity,” “transnationalism,” and “border zones” are part of the current theoretical vocabulary and, for some, deploy a fresh language of possibility, one promising to undermine the conformist values of monocultural perspectives. To that end, Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture explores theories and practices of identity from a broad perspective to grasp how varied, diffuse, and distorted they can be, especially when that identity seems boringly familiar. The subjects range from hip-hop parodies to punk preppies to pachuco-ska, thus crossing the lines of genre, medium, and discipline to blur the borderline dividing the kinds of texts to which these theories can “legitimately” be applied.

Arising from the street corners and underground clubs, Rebel Music: Resistance through Hip Hop and Punk, challenges standardized schooling and argues for equity, peace, and justice. Rebel Music is an important, one-of-a-kind book that takes readers through fun, radical, educational chapters examining Hip Hop and Punk songs, with each section addressing a particular social issue. Rebel Music values the experiences found in both movements as cultural capital that is de-valued in the current oppressive, standard, test-driven, rule-bound, and corporate schooling experience, making youth “just another brick in the wall.” This collection is a “rebel yell” to administrators, teachers, parents, police, politicians, and counselors who demonize Hip Hop and Punk to listen up and respect youth culture. Finally, Rebel Music is a celebration of radical voices and an organizing tool for those who use music to challenge oppression.