Bass Ackwards and Belly Up

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Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is a young-adult novel by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, published by Little, Brown in May 2006. The novel is the first by Craft and Fain, better known as writers and co-producers for the television show The Shield. They shared the writing duties with Craft writing the characters of Harper and Sophie and Fain writing the characters of Kate and Becca. The novel was nominated for a Borders Original Voices Award in 2006, in the Intermediate/Young Adult Books category.
The novel is about chasing dreams. The story starts in Boulder, Colorado with four best friends — Harper Waddle, Sophie Bushell, Becca Winsberg, and Kate Foster — who have finished high school and are supposed to be going to college. Kate's 14-year-old sister, Habiba, who was adopted from Ethiopia, is also a big part of the story. Harper is rejected from NYU but is too ashamed of herself to tell her friends. She lies and tells them she rejected NYU and is going to pursue her dream of writing the next Great American Novel. Sophie and Kate decide they have their own dreams: becoming an actress and finding her dream, respectively. They decide to bail on college, following Harper's example.