Educating Simon

By Robin Reardon

Everything sixteen-year-old Simon Fitzroy-Hunt loves in is in England. There is his school, his boyfriend, his cat, and especially Oxford University, which Simon plans to attend just as his beloved late father planned. But all of his certainties come crashing down when his mother remarries and drags him to Boston with her.

Furious and unforgiving, Simon finds plenty to resent in America. His stepsister is overindulged by her father and struggling with Asperger syndrome. And his school project (coaching a young student for the national Spelling Bee) hits a complication when eleven-year-old Toby makes a confession: there is a girl trapped inside his body, and her name is Kay.

Helping Kay find her way begins changing Simon, too, presenting different perspectives and revealing a strength that has gone untapped until now. And as the life he has known, and the future he envisioned, slips further away each day, he realizes he can either lose his direction entirely, or forge a new, and perhaps even better, path.