Leap Day: A novel for teenagers (Original writing)

Leap Day is a novel geared towards the reading level and interests of sixth through twelfth graders. The novel, which takes place in one day, alternates between the viewpoint of sixteen-year-old Josie Taylor and the other people she encounters during her day. This change in perspective is intended to both enlarge and deepen Josie's surroundings. On her sixteenth birthday, Josie desperately wants to feel like she has a place in the world. She doesn't realize that she is affecting people, in both small and large ways, all the time. The book takes her from the moment she wakes up, through her day at school, to her birthday celebration at night. During that time she has to take her driver's exam, audition for the lead in the school play, help her father with a bizarre new hobby, compete in a school-wide scavenger hunt, and face a sixteenth-birthday initiation by her friends. Through the characters interactions, both Josie and the reader are left with a heightened sense of compassion for others and an understanding that they are an integral part of the web of life around them.