The hardest thing about being a teenager is feeling different. Those who stand out from the crowd are likely to be the most interesting and talented, but it doesn't feel like that at the time. If you're the parent of a special child, you'll have a hard time convincing them that someday they'll be glad they're different.

Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli, comes with a bright pink cover so you can't miss it. And don't miss it. While it's for young adults, I have no problem with a 10-year-old reading it and quite enjoyed it myself. Stargirl is "homeschooling gone amok", as her classmates say. Or she may be an alien or a circus acrobat. One thing is certain, Stargirl Caraway, a new fourth-year student in a US high school, is a life-force so powerful that her classmates cannot cope with her.

She wears ankle-length frilly pioneer dresses and kimonos to school, strums a ukulele in the lunchroom, laughs when there are no jokes, and dances when there is no music. She spends her free time delivering presents and cards, anonymously, to deserving people. In a school full of conformists, she challenges everything there is to know about growing up too fast. As her friend, 16-year-old narrator Leo Borlock, says, "She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl." He can't handle her free-spiritedness and her altruism. They shun her, then fall in love with her, then shun her again. She disappears.

In our conformist system of education, where every student is expected to think, breathe and do the same thing as every other student (except Transition Year - and even then some), Stargirl reminds us that a lot of things you need to learn are outside the curriculum. The book should be included on the curriculum!