Gingerbread is an award-winning book, first in a teen novel/series written by Rachel Cohn

Rachel Cohn

Rachel Cohn is a young adult fiction author. Her first book, Gingerbread, was published in 2002...

. The book is about "Cyd Charrise", a punk

Punk subculture

The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...

 girl who lives in San Francisco with her parents Nancy and Sid, and siblings Ashley and Josh. The next two books in this young-adult series are Shrimp (2005) and Cupcake (2008).

Characters

The characters in the novel Gingerbread are described, below, using in-universe tone:

• Cyd Charrise is the narrator of all the books. She is a teenage girl who drives her mother, Nancy, crazy, and is a self-proclaimed "man's woman".
• Shrimp is Cyd's on-and-off boyfriend throughout the series. He is a mellow surfer and artist.
• Wallace, who is nicknamed Java, is Shrimp's brother and also Delia's boyfriend. Cyd had a short-term crush on him. He is another surfer.
• Delia is Java's girlfriend. She worked with him in his coffee shop. Delia is a great dancer in the story.
• Sugar Pie was Cyd's first friend. She lives in an assisted living facility. Cyd and Sugar Pie met when Cyd had to do community service
  Community service
  Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions....
  
   there, but now Cyd visits all the time, just to see Sugar.
• Helen is another friend of Cyd. Her family owns a Chinese restaurant, and she likes to make her mother angry. Helen is an artist and is always drawing, especially her Ball Hunter comic.
• Autumn is another friend of Cyd. Cyd used to hate her because Autumn had hooked up with Shrimp, but soon found out that Autumn is a lesbian
  Lesbian
  Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
  
  .
• Danny is Cyd's half-brother who lives in New York. He is a baker and co-owns a cafe with his boyfriend, Aaron. Danny and Aaron have been together for ten years.
• Aaron and Danny met in high school and have been together ever since. They own a cafe together called The Village Idiots. Aaron is in a band called My Dead Gay Son.
• lisBETH, actually named Rhonda is Cyd's half-sister. She works with Wall Street and usually dresses very formally.
• Frank (also known as bio-dad) is Cyd's biological father. He lives in New York and his children are Danny and lisBETH. He is a CEO and has trouble talking with Cyd. He supports Danny and Aaron's relationship, but it makes him uncomfortable. His wife died a few years before the book takes place. She was very Catholic.
• Sid is technically Cyd's stepfather, but she thinks of him as her real father. Cyd calls him "Sid-dad". He is also a CEO and is Danny and lisBETH's godfather.
• Nancy is Cyd's mom. She had Cyd when she was young, and Frank was married. They did not want Cyd to be confused as a child with two fathers, and so they waited until she was older to have her meet Frank. She is married to Sid, and they have two children together, Ashley and Josh.
• Ashley is a third grader in the 90th-weight percentile. She is adorable and loves to curse. She is Cyd's half-sister.
• Josh is a fifth grader with ADHD. He is Cyd's half-brother.

Awards

The novel Gingerbread received the following awards:

• American Library Association
  American Library Association
  The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
  
   (ALA) Best Book for Young Adults selection (2003)
• New York Public Library
  New York Public Library
  The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
  
   Books for the Teen Age selection (2003)
• International Reading Association
  International Reading Association
  The International Reading Association is an international professional organization that was created in 1956 to improve reading instruction, facilitate dialogue about research on reading, and encourage the habit of reading....
  
  (IRA) Young Adults' Choice (2004).

External links

• Rachel Cohn's Official Website