From E. Lockhart, author of the highly acclaimed, New York Times bestseller We Were Liars, which John Green called "utterly unforgettable," comes The Boy Book , the second book in the uproarious and heartwarming Ruby Oliver novels. Here is how things stand at the beginning of newly-licensed driver Ruby Oliver's junior year at Tate Prep:  • Kim: Not speaking. But far away in Tokyo.  • Cricket: Not speaking.  • Nora: Speaking--sort of. Chatted a couple times this summer when they bumped into each other outside of school--once shopping in the U District, and once in the Elliot Bay Bookstore. But she hadn't called Ruby, or anything.  • Noel: Didn't care what anyone thinks.  • Meghan: Didn't have any other friends.  • Dr. Z: Speaking.  • And Jackson. The big one. Not speaking. But, by Winter Break, a new job, an unlikely but satisfying friend combo, additional entries to The Boy Book and many difficult decisions help Ruby to see that there is, indeed, life outside the Tate Universe. Praise for the boy book :   * “Ruby’s overanalytical, fast-paced and authentic narration will win over new devotees, while her loyal fans will no doubt hope for more.”— Publishers Weekly , Starred   “Teens will relate to the situations that Ruby finds herself in and learn from her skills about how to cope with the ‘minefield’ of crises that today’s teens face.”— School Library Journal   “Lockhart achieves the perfect balance of self-deprecating humor and self-pity in Ruby, and thus imbues her with such realism that she seems to almost fly off the page.”— VOYA E. Lockhart is the author of the highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller We Were Liars and the Ruby Oliver quartet ( The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and Real Live Boyfriends ), as well as Fly on the Wall, Dramarama, and How to Be Bad (the last with Sarah Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle). Her novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book, a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of a Cybils Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. 1. The Care and Ownership of Boobs (a subject important to our study of the male humanoid animal because the boobs, if deployed properly, are like giant boy magnets attached to your chest. Or smallish boy magnets. Or medium. Depending on your endowment. But boy magnets. That is the point. They are magnets, we say. Magnets!) 1.If you jiggle, wear a bra. This means you. (Yes, you.) It is not antifeminist. It is more comfy and keeps the boobs from getting floppy. 2.No matter how puny your frontal equipment, don’t wear the kind with the giant pads inside. If a guy squeezes them, he will wonder why they feel like Nerf balls instead of boobs. And if you forget and wear a normal bra one day, everyone will then speculate on the strange expanding and contracting nature of your boobage. (Reference: the mysteriously changing chestal profile of Madame Long, French teacher and sometime bra padder.) 3.A helpful hint: For optimal shape, go in the bathroom stall and hike them up inside the bra. 4.Do not perform the above maneuver in public, no matter how urgent you think it is. 5.Do not go topless in anyone’s hot tub. Remember how Cricket had to press her chest against the side of the Van Deusens’ tub for forty-five minutes when Gideon and his friends came home? Let that be a lesson to you. (Yes, you.) 6.Do not sunbathe topless either, unless you’re completely ready to have sunburnt boobs whose skin will never be the same again (Reference: Roo, even though she swears she used sunblock) or unless you want to be yelled at by your mother for exposing yourself to the neighbors (Reference: Kim, even though really, no one saw and the neighbors were away on vacation). —from The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (A Kanga-Roo Production), written by me, Ruby Oliver, with number six added in Kim’s handwriting. Approximate date: summer after freshman year. The week before junior year began, the Doctors Yamamoto threw a ginormous going-away party for my ex-friend Kim. I didn’t go. She is my ex-friend. Not my friend. Kim Yamamoto was leaving to spend a semester at a school in Tokyo, on an exchange program. She speaks fluent Japanese. Her house has a big swimming pool, an even bigger yard, and a view of the Seattle skyline. On the eve of her going away, so I hear, her parents hired a sushi chef to come and chop up dead fish right in front of everyone, and the kids got hold of a few wine bottles. Supposedly, it was a great party. I wouldn’t know. I do know that the following acts of ridiculousness were perpetrated that night, after the adults got tired and went to bed around eleven. 1.Someone chundered behind the garden shed and never confessed. There were a number of possible suspects. 2.People had handstand contests and it turns out Shiv Neel c