Give me your dorky, your poor, your socially-challenged

For anyone who felt nerdy, unattractive, unappreciated, misunderstood, bullied or otherwise confused in middle- and high school, this is your lucky day.

Can I Sit With You? The Stormy Social Seas of the Schoolyard, edited by Shannon Des Roches Rosa and Jennifer Byde Myers, is an anthology of writing by adults about their middle- and high-school experiences. It's also a Web site, a network and an ongoing literary project, collecting stories--the painful, the never-admitted-to, the embarrassing and outright funny--of teenage social angst, anxiety and conflict.

But what makes this book so remarkable is that everything--from the cover artwork by noted Manga artist Lea Hernandez to the book design--was donated with one aim in mind: to fund SEPTAR, the special education PTA that Des Roches Rosa and Myers co-founded in Redwood City, California, their local school district. The goal? To offer support and additional resources to families of children with special needs.

Can I Sit With You? is currently accepting submissions for their weekly feature at www.canisitwithyou.org and for their second print anthology, to be published in Fall 2008. To submit a story, email cciswysubmissions@gmail.com by August 31, 2008. To purchase the book, click here. To support or learn more about SEPTAR, visit www.septar.org.

Original Silicon Valley Moms Blog post. Susan Etlinger writes about autism and special needs parenting at BabyCenter's MOMFormation and at her personal blog, The Family Room.