In tackling the well-worn theme of a girl who aspires to enter the in-crowd, Strasser (Give a Boy a Gun, 2000, etc.) complicates the usual plot by introducing a female, middle-school version of a con man. Lauren, who spends lunchtime with her overweight friend Tara, longingly watches the popular girls’ table as Celeste, a new girl, joins the inner circle. When Celeste befriends her, Lauren hopes it will pull her into the clique. But it’s soon obvious that Celeste is untrustworthy, stealing Lauren’s CDs, copying her homework, borrowing money she doesn’t repay, yet never inviting Lauren to the coveted lunch table. Why Lauren is so desperate to be popular, and why Celeste is so devious, are never clear. The hints about Celeste’s dishonesty intensify when Lauren and Celeste are elected co-treasurers of their class. Implausibly, they can withdraw hundreds of dollars from the class bank account with only their signatures and no adult approval. When Celeste insists they practice their signatures together, it’s obvious—although apparently not to Lauren—that Celeste is up to something. She fakes Lauren’s signature and steals the money, successfully setting Lauren up to take the blame and sacrifice her hard-earned savings to make up for some of the loss. Equally implausibly, parents are not called in and the principal decides to overlook the $200 still missing. The text addresses readers as “you,” but since readers are unlikely to be as gullible as Lauren, equating them with her is distracting. While readers may identify with the premise of wishing to be popular even at a high price, the awkward narrative voice and the holes in the plot keep this from being wholly persuasive. (Fiction 10-13)
Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-8234-1394-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
Year-round fun.
Set in 1937 during the so-called “Roosevelt recession,” tight times compel Mary Alice, a Chicago girl, to move in with her grandmother, who lives in a tiny Illinois town so behind the times that it doesn’t “even have a picture show.”
This winning sequel takes place several years after A Long Way From Chicago (1998) leaves off, once again introducing the reader to Mary Alice, now 15, and her Grandma Dowdel, an indomitable, idiosyncratic woman who despite her hard-as-nails exterior is able to see her granddaughter with “eyes in the back of her heart.” Peck’s slice-of-life novel doesn’t have much in the way of a sustained plot; it could almost be a series of short stories strung together, but the narrative never flags, and the book, populated with distinctive, soulful characters who run the gamut from crazy to conventional, holds the reader’s interest throughout. And the vignettes, some involving a persnickety Grandma acting nasty while accomplishing a kindness, others in which she deflates an overblown ego or deals with a petty rivalry, are original and wildly funny. The arena may be a small hick town, but the battle for domination over that tiny turf is fierce, and Grandma Dowdel is a canny player for whom losing isn’t an option. The first-person narration is infused with rich, colorful language—“She was skinnier than a toothpick with termites”—and Mary Alice’s shrewd, prickly observations: “Anybody who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”
Year-round fun. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2518-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Playing on his customary theme that children have more on the ball than adults give them credit for, Clements (Big Al and Shrimpy, p. 951, etc.) pairs a smart, unhappy, rich kid and a small-town teacher too quick to judge on appearances. Knowing that he’ll only be finishing up the term at the local public school near his new country home before hieing off to an exclusive academy, Mark makes no special effort to fit in, just sitting in class and staring moodily out the window. This rubs veteran science teacher Bill Maxwell the wrong way, big time, so that even after Mark realizes that he’s being a snot and tries to make amends, all he gets from Mr. Maxwell is the cold shoulder. Matters come to a head during a long-anticipated class camping trip; after Maxwell catches Mark with a forbidden knife (a camp mate’s, as it turns out) and lowers the boom, Mark storms off into the woods. Unaware that Mark is a well-prepared, enthusiastic (if inexperienced) hiker, Maxwell follows carelessly, sure that the “slacker” will be waiting for rescue around the next bend—and breaks his ankle running down a slope. Reconciliation ensues once he hobbles painfully into Mark’s neatly organized camp, and the two make their way back together. This might have some appeal to fans of Gary Paulsen’s or Will Hobbs’s more catastrophic survival tales, but because Clements pauses to explain—at length—everyone’s history, motives, feelings, and mindset, it reads more like a scenario (albeit an empowering one, at least for children) than a story. Worthy—but just as Maxwell underestimates his new student, so too does Clement underestimate his readers’ ability to figure out for themselves what’s going on in each character’s life and head. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-82596-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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