If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period

Gennifer Choldenko

Oct 2007 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Ariadne Meyers and Francois Battiste

About this audiobook

For Kirsten McKenna, the world is crumbling. Her parents are barely speaking to each other, and her best friend has come under the spell of the school’s queen bee, Brianna. Only Kirsten’s younger science-geek sister is on her side.

For Walker Jones, the goal is to survive at the new white private school his mom has sent him to because she thinks he’s going to screw up like his cousin. (Walk keeps telling her,“Don’t have to worry, Momma. Before I go bad I’ll let you know, send a Hallmark card ready-made for the occasion . ‘On the eve your son messes up.’”)

But Walk is a good kid. So is his new friend, Matteo, though no one knows why Matteo will do absolutely anything that hot blond Brianna asks of him.

Then Kirsten discovers something that shakes her and Walk to their cores. . . .

About the author

Gennifer Choldenko was bused to a predominantly black junior high after attending a mostly white elementary school. “Everywhere I went,” she remembers, “I was first my skin color and then who I was. And I never forgot what that felt like. I think the seed of this book was planted in that experience.” She is the author of several children’s books, including the Newbery Honor and New York Times Book Review bestseller Al Capone Does My Shirts, which was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and an ALA Notable Children’s Book, and which also received the Sid Fleischman Humor Award. She lives with her husband and two children in the San Francisco Bay Area.