Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

**M. E. Kerr’s first novel—hailed by the *New York Times *as a “timely, compelling,” and “brilliantly funny” look at adolescence and friendship **

It was bad enough that they had to move to Brooklyn—Brooklyn *Heights*, as Tucker Woolf’s dad instructs him to tell everyone after he loses his job. Now his father has suddenly developed an allergy to Tucker’s cat, Nader, a nine-month-old calico Tucker found underneath a Chevrolet. Tucker’s beloved pet finds a new home with overweight, outrageous Susan “Dinky” Hocker, the only person to answer Tucker’s ad.

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**As Tucker starts paying regular visits to Dinky’s house to check up on Nader, his life begins to change. Dinky introduces Tucker to her strange cousin, Natalia Line, a compulsive rhymer whom Tucker finds fascinating. And enter P. John Knight, who’s fat like Dinky . . . and now, like Nader. With this odd cast of characters, a little world is created for *big* kids who need to go on diets. And who also, all of them, need to find out who they are.

A story of friendship, self-image, and surviving adolescence, *Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! *is also about the terror—and exhilaration—of daring to be yourself.