Jerk, California

Twitch, jerk, freak -- Sam Carrier has been called them all. Because of his Tourette's Syndrome, he is in near constant motion with tics, twitches, and verbal outbursts. So, not surprisingly, high school is pure torment. And home isn't much better with his domineering stepfather reminding him that the only person who was more useless than Sam was his dead father, Jack. But then an unexpected turn of events unearths the truth about his father, and Sam is sent on a trip across country from Minnesota to California to learn the whole story. Winner of the 2009 Schneider Family Award for high school readers, this story was written by Minnesotan Jonathan Friesen, who does an outstanding and sympathetic job of describing the experience of having Tourette's Syndrome.