NATURE GIRL

Should readers care enough about the Appalachian Trail experiences of an extremely whiny girl to stick with this effort? Rising seventh grader Megan has had a hard year, as her best friend, Lucy, has barely coped with her own mother’s bout with Hodgkin’s disease. Megan has responded to this challenge as she does to most: She’s felt very sorry for herself. Being forced to spend the summer in rural Vermont is just one more crushing disappointment for this shallow New York City girl. After getting lost, she stumbles upon the Appalachian Trail and decides to hike to Mount Greylock in Massachusetts to meet up with Lucy, plodding on and often hiding after she realizes that a major search effort to find her has been launched. Enduring hardship and some funny, challenging wilderness experiences, she reevaluates her relationships with her family and Lucy and gradually accepts some responsibility for her own actions, but the change seems superficial and not completely believable. A greater issue: Can readers put up with her long enough to care what happens? Maybe. (Fiction. 9-13)