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While
riding down the school's escalator, 15-year-old Ned.jpg) Vizzini dropped his super-dorky backpack at the feet
of an attractive female student using a cell phone.
"I
could've been a cute guy who'd flung my backpack at
her to break the ice," he wrote in his popular
book "Teen Angst? Naaah ..."
Instead,
"she sized me up, cocked her head and kicked my
backpack as hard as she could the rest of the way
down." Riding the subway home to Brooklyn, the
author was angry and frustrated. Taking out a
crumpled piece of paper, Ned, then a freshman at New
York City's Stuyvesant High School, vented his
profane-ridden rants into little essays.
"I
felt I was perceived as a galoot in my early teens
by the adult world," he said. "That's
someone who is a stupid person. I used my writing to
show the adult world I wasn't gallootish." Ned
cautions: "Adults get so scared by the
delinquents on talk shows and the local news that
when we hit 15, they write us off as unhelpable,
feral youth. Adults need to be less
suspicious."
Ned
managed to get some of his essays, cleaned up of
course, published in New York Press, a local
community newspaper. This led to an article for The
New York Times Magazine, which caught a publisher's
attention.
"More
and more young teens want to write and get
published," states Judy Galbraith, Ned's
publisher and president of Free Spirit Publishing.
Her company has carved out a niche of teen-authored
books. In May, Free Spirit Publishing released "More Than a Label: Why What You Wear
or Who You're With Doesn't Define Who You Are"
written by 18-year-old Aisha Muharrar, a senior at
Bay Shore High School in Long Island, N.Y.
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