Help identify this 1990s YA novel where a clumsy kid gets fit
July 7, 2020 12:25 AM   Subscribe

I'm trying to identify a book I remember reading that had several memorable scenes. I would have read it sometime between 1994-1998. I think the name might have been Stitches, but searching for that on Goodreads is useless.

As well as I can recall, the plot goes like this:

Our Hero is a boy in junior high, or maybe a high school freshman. He's generically clumsy and out of shape. He makes a bet with classmates that he can make it through the summer break without breaking a bone or needing stitches. I don't remember the payout if he wins, but if he loses, his penalty is having to kiss an ugly girl (in front of the whole school?), who is off at summer camp for most of the story.

His friend wants to help him win the bet, so he has him doing boot camp-style running and agility work all summer, to improve on the clumsiness. Near the end of summer, there's some chase scene where he hops a fence into Coveted Older Girl Next Door's yard, where she's sunbathing on her stomach with her bikini top untied, and she sits straight up and stares at him in shock. The book made a big deal about this.

In the course of the chase, he tears himself up on a chain-link fence, and in the ER he is faced with the choice of getting butterfly bandages or stitches. He chooses stitches, to lose the bet for some deeply meaningful reason.

First day of school, he's lined up to pay his penalty of kissing the ugly girl, but when she steps off the bus it turns out she's gotten super hot at summer camp. She points out that he's also gotten super hot, on accident, on account of all the running. Joke's on everyone who thought the kiss was going to be gross!

I cringed remembering the details about the female characters in this book, and I'm sure I would never recommend this book to my kids. But I'm sure it exists! Does anyone else remember it?
posted by lostburner to Media & Arts (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I’m so confident I read this book too! For some reason I feel like the title was something like “Klutz” or “Clumsy” or included those words, but my googling hasn’t turned up anything.
posted by MadamM at 12:54 AM on July 7, 2020


Best answer: The Biggest Klutz in 5th Grade by Bill Wallace
posted by alygator at 12:58 AM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks! That’s it. As it happens, I found the right search terms after posting, too. The search was “stitches bet kiss book.”
posted by lostburner at 7:31 AM on July 7, 2020


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