Bauer's books have won numerous prizes and awards. Her first novel,Squashed, received the Ninth Annual Delacorte Press Prize for an Outstanding First Young Adult Novel. Sixteen-year-old Ellie Morgan, like Jenna in Rules of the Road, is less than happy with her physical appearance but uses her sense of humor to get her through.

Many of her novels feature a strong, female protagonist with the exception of Sticks which has a male protagonist. In Sticks, Bauer wrote about a ten-year-old boy and his love of pool. As in Rules of the Road, the protagonist is dealing with an absent father. For Jenna in Rules of the Road, he is an alcoholic father whom her mother divorced. For Mickey Vernon in Sticks, his father died when Mickey was a baby. Where Jenna feels ashamed, embarrassed and disconnected by her father's addiction, Mickey has deep connections to pool...