SYNOPSIS
Sixteen-year-old misfit Chris Boyd moves with his mother, a practical nurse, from one live-in job to another. Lloyd Dipardi, himself a misfit, points the way to manhood for Chris by teaching him to take responsibility for his own life. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

REVIEWS BY KIDS
They don't make books like this any more
After reading The Pigman and The Pigman's Legacy, I wanted to get my hands on anything Paul Zindel has written. I picked up Confessions Of A Teenage Baboon one day, and I haven't put it down since.

Basically the book revolves around fifteen-year-old Chris Boyd and his struggles with his dysfunctional mother and the memories of his late father. His mother is a nurse, and whenever she gets a new patient, she and Chris move into the patient's home to take care of him/her. This time around the patient is an elderly woman named Carmelita Dipardi. And the members of the Dipardi household make the families in the movie "American Beauty" look normal. There's Carmelita's drunk son Lloyd and her disturbed husband, as well as Harold, a kid from the neighborhood that always seems to be around.

Here Chris battles love, hate, pain, violence, and especially depression, while temporarily living in the madhouse that is the Dipardi residence. The book can be shocking at times, but all the way through it's very enjoyable. It's filed under YOUNG ADULT, but adults can enjoy it just as much as teens...even more so, I think. I literally read it almost every day and I still never get tired of it. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.