Tish Cohen, author of TOWN HOUSE, generally writes children's
books. INSIDE OUT GIRL is a book for adults about children. It
takes a sympathetic and sensitive look at the hidden lives of
youngsters, sees what they see and tells us how they feel --- about
bullying, pop culture and even being gay.

Len Bean is a widower trying, often desperately, to raise
Olivia, a six-year-old with "special needs," in this case a
learning disorder that gives her the appearance of a
higher-than-average verbal intelligence masking a total inability
to understand what people are trying to tell her. If you tell
Olivia "You're pulling my leg," her eyes go to your legs. Olivia
thinks, hopes, that every day is her birthday and keeps on
believing that children, any children, will come to her party. For
Len, life is less than a party, knowing as he does that Olivia will
repel rather than attract other kids, and will need a high level of
personal care all her life.

Len meets Rachel Berman on the roadside, where he is trying
ineptly to change a tire while looking out for the obstreperous
Olivia. Rachel knows how to change a tire. She is the highly
competent managing editor of a children's magazine called
Perfect Parent, which has been losing sales lately because
the reality of parenting is less than perfect. She takes time out
of her packed schedule, which includes monitoring her two
adolescent kids and unruly mother, to help Len, whose specialty is
divorce and adoption law. His profession is part of the attraction
--- that and Olivia, whose gun-metal gray eyes speak volumes to
Rachel, reminding her starkly of a secret in her past that will
come to light in the course of her crisis-to-crisis life as a
single mom trying to engage in a courtship after a bad divorce.

As Len and Rachel become something more than friends, Olivia
innocently believes that Janie and Dustin are her friends as well.
She can't understand that people in their early teen years would
rather, in the parlance of Janie and Dustin's favorite made-up
game, "kiss a dead body crawling with a million trillion maggots"
than be seen hanging out in public with a special needs kid. This
leads to a terrible betrayal of Olivia. But worse is to come.

Thoughts of Olivia, and her growing affection for the child,
have unlocked a Pandora's box of feelings in Rachel. Olivia's needs
link Rachel back to her long-hidden past sins. And Len has
something else going --- something worse, something that threatens
Olivia's future in the most crucial way. But neither of them wants
to talk about it. Until Olivia gets lost while the two families are
out together experimenting in blending, and a Code Adam is
released. Her loss and recovery signal that it's time to talk.

Through the eyes of Olivia and Rachel's kids, Dustin and Janie,
we are led into the often seamy underworld of junior high school.
At 14 Janie is pretty sure she's a lesbian --- that's a tough
revelation for someone her age and made more so by her frustrated
crush on Tabitha, a rich girl, a snob, one of the in-crowd. By
guile and shameless fawning, Janie manages to worm her way into
Tabitha's inner circle, and through careful plotting she gets her
alone in her bedroom and sets up for a kiss. Not surprisingly her
best-planned lay becomes the perfect storm of disgrace, with
ripples of cruel gossip and mistreatment in its wake. Janie wants
to die, but the alternative is to go ahead and have sex with a boy,
to white-wash her public image, and punish herself for her
stupidity in loving a girl. And she might have succeeded in
charting her self-destruction --- but it is miraculously, if
unconventionally, rescued by the despised and ignored Olivia.

INSIDE OUT GIRL is a crisp and involving novel that all parents
would enjoy, and it's entirely suitable for older teens as well.
Without the slightest hint of preaching, it throws a sympathetic
lifeline to single parents. It gives excellent insight into what it
must be like to raise a child with special needs, especially those
of a more perplexing, less socially understood sort. It shows how
trying to be the "perfect parent" can lead to pitfalls, and reveals
some broader definitions of love and caring within and beyond the
conventional family.