Category: Girl Talk

Girl Talk #27: Perfect Match

This one is narrated by Katie. She and the gang are taking a computer class with a teacher named Mr. Young, who requires students to work in groups to write their own computer program. Katie, Allison, Randy, and Sabrina create a dating program for their assignment. Each student in the class answers questions and the computer pairs the classmates into boy-girl couples. Then, the teacher organizes a group date to the movies and to Fitzie’s, a local restaurant. It’s an interesting idea for a book, though I doubt it would realistically happen in life. Who knows, though. I suppose kids have done stranger school projects. And just because I’m not smart enough to write a computer program doesn’t mean middle-schoolers couldn’t do it.

Stacy Hansen, the group’s nemesis, spreads a rumor that Katie fixed the computer program so that Katie can be matched up with Greg Loggins. Stacy tells everyone that Katie likes Greg, which is untrue. Scottie hears the rumor and believes it. He starts freezing Katie out and giving her death stares. Sound familiar? This is typical Scottie in-a-rage behavior. As I’ve said before, Scottie doesn’t deserve Katie, and he doesn’t treat her right. Still, she thinks he’s sooo cute. She still likes him, and of course she basically tells him so at the end after she catches him flirting with Stacy to make Katie jealous. Katie sounds pretty mature when she tells Scottie she doesn’t want a serious relationship. I’m quite sure she says that only because these books are for young kids whom parents would think are too young to date. Otherwise, Katie would definitely want Scottie as her boyfriend. All he has to do is smile and wear that hockey letter jacket and she falls all over him.

This book gives us some insight into Greg Loggins. I believe he’s the jerk who said some obnoxious things during the 7th grade trip to Eagle Mountain in book #6, and I know he’s the obnoxious one who bugged Allison during the bowling trip when she was crushing on Billy Dixon in book #10. In this book, Katie still thinks he’s obnoxious until she gets to know him and realizes he acts out because it’s an attempt to get attention from his uncaring father. I felt bad for Greg when he was telling Katie that during their date. I thought it was the most heartfelt and true-to-life part of this book. I wish Scottie could show more vulnerability the way that Greg does.

The one part I didn’t like about this book was all the computer talk as they were learning to write their computer program. Perhaps it was necessary to include those bits in the book, though they bored me.

Happy New Year, dear readers. 😃

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Girl Talk #17: Star Quality

It’s been a while since I recapped one of these, so here goes. I had fun reading this one. I think the reason I love this series so much is because the four main characters are such good friends. I have never had a close group of friends, and I envy the Fab Four. I ❤️ their loyalty. I ❤️ their strong bond. I ❤️ their youth and vitality.

This book tells the story of the girls and Hitline USA, a television talent show. The show features singing groups who dress up and lip synch to popular music. It’s a nationally televised show that just happens to be hosting auditions in nearby Minneapolis. Sabrina, Randy, Allison, and Katie form a group called Pump it Up and dance to a song called Bounce Right Back. They’re competing against four other groups, including The Valentines, which happens to be Stacy the Great’s group. Sabrina, our narrator for this book, is totally jelly because The Valentines have glamorous dresses with sequins and high heels. Sabrina’s friends decide to dress as bouncing balls to fit with their Bounce Right Back theme. Sabs thinks the bouncing balls idea is a bad one because it’s corny, and I agree with her, but she doesn’t want to upset her friends, especially after she finds out that Randy’s mom has sewn ball costumes for everyone and Katie’s mom has bought rubber balls that Sabrina’s friends plan to sew onto the costumes.

Plot twist: Sabs’ dog Cinnamon chews up their bouncing ball costumes, so they wind up wearing matching minidresses with low heels instead. Sabrina’s friends buy her a gold jacket to wear since she’s kinda the leader of the singing group and she’s the most excited about being on TV. Look at the cover art:

Sabrina’s jacket looks cool, and I like the girls’ tights and heels. I always liked these book covers. The artist makes the girls look as described in the text. We can always tell who each girl is supposed to be. Randy has the spiked hair, and Allison is the tall, slim one, etc. However, the girls often look more like college-age women than middle schoolers, though.

Stacy is obnoxious as usual in this one. She taunts and harasses Sabrina, telling her that The Valentines will win the competition. The best quote from the book is from the moment where Sabrina describes Stacy’s arrogance and hair flip as she brags:

“Stacy flipped her hair one last time—rather strongly. The ends hit me right in the face.” 😂🤣

Sabrina and the gang work well together and are overall proud of their performance. The Valentines screw up royally by bumping into each other on stage, teetering on their too-tall heels, and forgetting the song lyrics. The Valentines come in last place. Sabs’ group wins the runner-up prize, which is a gift certificate to a record store and some tote bags.

The girls have a blast on camera dancing around and just being friends. They also learn a bit about show business. For instance, someone on set holds up a card reminding the audience to clap. Also, the show’s host, Rick Stevens, has the stereotypical diva attitude that I imagine some celebrities have. The celebrity guest, Alek Carreon, is the opposite; he’s sweet and down-to-earth.

Ciao for now! 😊

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Girl Talk #43: Katie’s Beverly Hills Friend

This is the one where Katie’s friend Erica comes back to Acorn Falls. Erica and Katie were previously inseparable in elementary school, but Erica moved to California the summer before seventh grade. This current visit from Erica is awkward because Erica was friends with Stacey and her crowd, and Katie used to hang with them, but now Katie despises Stacey.

Erica is now a spoiled princess. She lives in Beverly Hills and won’t let anyone forget it. Her behavior is a huge contrast to that of Katie, who is also rich, though not nearly as spoiled.

This book repeatedly reminds us how rich Katie is. Money oozes off the pages. Katie goes to the airport to pick up Erica in a chauffeured limo. Katie’s parents can’t drive her to the airport themselves because they have to attend a country club luncheon. The mansion where Katie lives with her family has a circular driveway and a cook named “Cook.” 🙄

Erica is snooty and refers to Acorn Falls as a “dinky little town.” She also disses the mall and would heaps rather spend time with Stacey the Great than with Katie’s friends. During a game of truth or dare, she asks Katie to tell the group who she’s crushing on. This embarrasses Katie because Stacey and her clones are there and Katie doesn’t want everyone to know she likes Scottie. Erica also flirts with Scottie right in front of Katie.

Lesson learned: Sabrina, Randy, and Allison are Katie’s true friends. They’ll be bffs 4-evah!

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Girl Talk #10: Falling in Like

I first read this book in middle school. Before I started re-reading it this past weekend, I could still recall one detail: Allison walks into an event and feels others staring at her and judging her. She thinks to herself, “I was proud to be there with Billy.”

The fact that I can recall this tiny bit of a scene is a huge compliment to the author. For many books, especially those I read 20+ years ago, I’m unable to evoke any memories at all. Girl Talk is one of those series that I can still recall specific details about.

In this one, Allison volunteers to tutor a fellow student named Billy Dixon who struggles in school. At first, Allison shows reticence to work with him after witnessing him yelling at another student in the lunchroom. In their first tutoring session, she notices that he’s very smart. He can multiply fractions in his head, and he even corrects her on a math mistake. Problem is, he corrects her in a hateful, “you’re a terrible tutor” way, and she cries.

Rather than run away, Allison becomes determined to help Billy, whom she sees as smart but lacking in discipline. As they continue working together she asks him over to her house to study. While the two of them read a story with Allison’s little brother Charlie, Allison notices that Billy makes several reading mistakes. Allison’s mama, a former teacher, later tells her that Billy may have a reading disorder. Allison realizes his difficulty with reading is probably the reason he gets so testy with her when they study English together.

Sam’s group of guy friends challenges Allison and her friends to a bowling competition. Allison, having never bowled before, worries about the competition. On the bowling night, they see Billy at the bowing alley, which has the clever moniker Lois Lane’s. After watching her bowl several gutter balls, Billy comes over to Allison and coaches her on how to hold the ball and when to release it. Greg Loggins notices that Allison begins to bowl better after the pointers from Billy, and he accuses them of cheating and gets belligerent about it. In a previous book, I believe Greg was the one who behaved obnoxiously during the 7th grade trip to Eagle Mountain. 😟

Allison finally bowls a strike, and when she turns to celebrate it with Billy, he’s gone. He probably bails due to Greg’s behavior. However, this feels slightly out of character for Billy, who doesn’t appear to scare easily in earlier scenes.

Billy asks Allison on a date. She feels excited but nervous because this will be her first date. The girls try to coach her on what to say during the date, but they just wind up giggling a lot.

Allison goes over to Billy’s house to convince him to take the reading test, which is important because it will determine if he has a disorder. His front yard needs mowing. The front porch sags. Inside, dirty dishes are piled up and Allison itches to clean the place. Allison implies to the reader that the house is so dirty because Billy has no mom (his mom died years ago), though she doesn’t mention where his father is or even think that a man could possibly run a household effectively without a woman. 😬

Anyway, Alison finds Billy in the basement with several older boys. They’re shooting pool, but when Allison comes in the boys begin to flirt with her. Allison is obviously uncomfortable about being cooped up in a windowless space with bad boys. How do we know these are bad boys? Because they wear ripped jeans and one of them refers to Allison’s teacher as a hag. Allison tries to talk with Billy, but he doesn’t come sit by her and he gives her the cold shoulder. Billy clearly feels jealous that all the guys want Allison, and his response is to stand there sulking while they flirt with her. She flees the basement and Billy follows her upstairs. She begins to cry as she runs from the house, ignoring Billy as he calls her name.

Later, Billy phones to apologize for his jerk behavior. One thing I notice about several of the boys in Acorn Falls is that they have fragile egos and often misbehave when jealous of another guy. We saw this in book #2 when Katie tries out for the hockey team and Scottie feels threatened by having a girl on the team, so his response is to physically hurt her on the ice as a way to soothe his ego. Later, when Michel moves to town in Mixed Feelings, Scottie feels jealous that Katie might like Michel, so Scottie snaps at Katie and treats her like crap. And what about Sabs and Nick? In book one, Nick assumes Sabs is flirting with another guy, so he uninvites her to the school dance. Sabs, Katie, and now Allison in this book, all easily forgive these boys’ insecure behaviors. 😟

Billy takes the test and discovers he does have a learning disorder. We assume that he’s able to get help and improve his grades. However all of that is pretty glossed over and the last part of the book focuses on the date, which includes dinner at the burger joint in town and attending the movie at the junior high. When Allison and Billy walk into the restaurant together, Stacy Hansen watches them obnoxiously, but Allison holds her head high. Billy holds her hand and later puts his arm around her at the restaurant as they sit with Billy’s group of older boys. Allison feels good knowing that Billy is “public” about the fact that he likes her. Maybe this is why adult me remembered the scene so many years after having read it the first time. Adolescent me must’ve envied that feeling Allison has. It’s a feeling of confidence that comes from knowing that someone cares about you and wants to show everyone. Sweet.

Here’s the cover. Allison looks bored or fed up. Billy looks tortured.

Last time I said Here Comes the Bride was my favorite book of the series. Falling in Like gives it stiff competition. In fact, I may have to change my mind and call this one my new favorite. 👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿

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Girl Talk #16: Here Comes the Bride

Of the Girl Talk books I’ve reviewed so far, this is probably the best one. Katie is surprised when her mother announces her engagement to Michel Beauvais’s father, Jean Paul Beauvais. This feels pretty sudden to me. I mean, they only started dating five books ago. Katie, of course, feels shocked and blindsided by the news. When she finds out she’ll be captain of next year’s hockey team, she’s bursting to tell her mom, but Mama Campbell, preoccupied with wedding details, ignores Katie.

The subplot involves the girls preparing for a 1960s-themed dance at school. They raid Sabs’s mom’s old boxes of clothes looking for outfits to wear. I enjoyed hearing them exclaim over hip-hugger pants and go-go boots. Later, Katie goes through clothes her own mom has stowed away in the attic. She learns that her mom was a hippie. Katie also begins to feel better about her mother marrying Jean Paul, and this comes after she has a heart-to-heart with her mom. They discuss the things they miss about Katie’s dad. One of my favorite things about this book was that Katie and her mom talked through some of the stress of a new family dynamic. Though Katie’s misgivings about her mother marrying someone who isn’t her father dissipate too quickly, I still enjoyed her chat with her mother. I think it’s because I’ve been interested in changing family dynamics in novels since forever. They fascinate me. How will the new siblings get along? How will the parents handle being stepparents?

Katie’s extended family members come to stay overnight with the Campbells the day before the wedding. I know that current of energy in a home that comes from having family all around and feeling everyone’s excitement as you await something special. When the wedding day finally arrives, Katie and Michel march in together. The other details are pretty banal. The bride and groom kiss. Sabs cries. Yadda yadda yadda.

Aside from Katie’s heart-to-heart with her mom, my other favorite part of this book comes at the dance. Katie dances with Scottie Silver, and Michel rudely cuts in. When Katie berates Michel for being so rude, he basically tells her that Scottie is a player and says he wants to protect Katie from Scottie since Katie is his sister now. Haha. I’m actually on Michel’s side. I’ve disliked Scottie ever since he abused Katie in book two when she tried out for the hockey team. But Katie doesn’t get it. She even admits she knows that Scottie goes out with a lot of girls. Ugh, Katie! When will you learn, sis? Sabs tells Katie that she better get used to Michel acting like a brother and looking out for her. A minute later when Stacey calls Michel immature, Katie takes up for him and warns Stacey not to talk smack about her brother. Though that whole conversation was corny as heck, I liked it. Love to see people standing up for one another. Of all the boys we have met so far in the Girl Talk books I’ve reviewed, Michel is easily the one with the most boyfriend potential. He’s handsome, bilingual, athletic, and a reasonable person. Mr. Perfect.

See you next time.

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Girl Talk #6: The Ghost of Eagle Mountain, or The One in Which Native American History Is Distorted by Whites

And now we come to The Ghost of Eagle Mountain. As a child reader, this one and Face Off! were my favorites of the entire series. Told from Allison’s perspective, this book focuses on a skiing trip that she and her fellow seventh-graders take to Eagle Mountain (which I recently learned is a real place in Minnesota). Allison and the gang find out that they are rooming together, but the other four people in their cabin will be vain, snobby, Stacey “the Great” Hansen and her friends Eva, Laurel, and B.Z.

From the first mention of the trip to Eagle Mountain, Allison has a dreadful feeling that something terrible will happen. Then, she inexplicably finds a loose eagle feather in her locker at school. Allison’s grandma later tells her a story about a man named Eagle Feather who was one of their family’s tribe, the Chippewa. He was separated from his wife and child when the Indians were relocated to a reservation. The legend says that he haunts the area around Eagle Mountain, searching for his lost love.

On the way to Eagle Mountain, the school bus breaks down, and Allison can’t shake the ominous feeling of dread. Allison and her friends do have a good bit of fun learning to ski from their cute instructor. However, when given the task to go on a scavenger hunt on skis, the girls get lost after trying to take a shortcut. This feels like something that would almost never happen in real life. Chaperones are always right around the corner on school trips. It’s hard to believe they’d let a bunch of groups go off on their own through the woods on skis. Allison and company get sooo lost. They wind up crossing a stream and then skiing near a frozen river.

Inexplicably, the girls find their way back to the trail. Or, I guess I should say that they stumble onto the ski lodge by dumb luck.

After dinner, Ranger Rob begins to tell all the 7th graders a ghost story, and Allison realizes it’s the story her grandma told her about Eagle Feather. However, Rob’s story is completely different. He calls Eagle Feather by the name of Flying Eagle and says that Flying Eagle was a menacing Indian who liked to attack white settlers. He says that now that Flying Eagle is dead he roams Eagle Mountain in search of his next victims. Allison, of course, becomes enraged. I remember feeling upset, too, while reading this as a middle-schooler. I didn’t have the language to describe it back then, but I just knew and understood what an injustice it was. Now I see that this is a prime example of history being mistold and distorted by the victors. God only knows how many real-life instances we have of this. In grad school a white classmate of mine asked why we need to teach books by a diversity of authors. My best answer is that diverse reading helps us see things from multiple perspectives. When I teach slave narratives in American lit classes, students are often shocked by the stories. They grew up knowing that slavery existed in this country, but many history books don’t go into much detail about the gruesome, inhumane ways slaves were treated. That’s why we need diversity. We need for people to read multiple perspectives in order for them to understand. Same is true for Native Americans and settlers and the long and painful history about what happened between them.

One issue I have with this book is that things are tied up too neatly. Allison ventures off into the woods because she thinks she hears the ghost of Eagle Feather moaning. She gets lost but sits down and sings to the ghost. Her voice quiets the wind and the moaning. Then, an eagle feather drifts down from the sky. She takes this as a sign that the ghost is now at rest. Too easy. Then, her friends find her after she’s only been lost for about ten minutes. Too easy.

Don’t get me wrong. I still like this book because I like its message about giving a voice to oppressed people. However, I guess I was expecting a bit more complexity, which might be too much to ask of a book for middle-graders. Anyway, it’s still a good book and one I’d recommend to school kids.

Grade: A-

Ghost of Eagle Mountain

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Girl Talk #11: Mixed Feelings

This one focuses on Katie Campbell. The basic plot: Katie’s mother begins dating a newcomer to town, a man whose son plays on the hockey team with Katie at school. The son’s name is Michel, and the father is Jean Paul, and the twosome hail from Canada and have heavy, French Canadian accents. The accent is described by both Katie and Sabs as a French accent, which confused me. Would it really be called a French accent if they aren’t from France? As a child when I read these books I didn’t understand the difference between a race and an ethnic group, and I thought French Canadians were a different category of white and I even questioned their whiteness, and I believe the reason I did this is that the author makes mention of how dark Michel’s hair and eyes are, which made me think that he looks like a dark-featured Native American or a brown Hispanic. I’m not sure if this is what the author intended. I come from a small town in Georgia where most of the people are whites descended from Scotch Irish and have lived in this country for many generations. I didn’t hear too many foreign accents in my town and had never met any French or Canadian people. Reading these books as a middle schooler helped to introduce me to people outside my town, even though those people are fictional. Another great reason to read is that it opens people up to varying perspectives. I realize that a white writer might think of other white people as dark. Whereas, I’m a dark-skinned Black woman and rarely think of most whites as dark at all. In fact, if you’re past a certain shade, I question if you’re truly white.

Anyway, here are a few notable things that happened in this one:

  1. Katie’s mom meets Michel’s dad, Mr. Beauvais, when he applies for a mortgage at the bank where she works. Later in the series it’s revealed that the Beauvais family is stinking rich, so why are they applying for a home loan? Why wouldn’t they just pay cash?
  2. The title is a bit misleading. Katie doesn’t have mixed feelings about Michel. She likes him as a friend and doesn’t really think of him as more than that. She doesn’t spend much time thinking about him at all. Instead, she wants to win the big hockey game and make the playoffs. She also worries when her mother gets a makeover and announces that she’s seeing Jean Paul, and this is because he’s the first man she’s dated since Katie’s father passed away three years ago. Katie doesn’t have romantic feelings for Michel, and in fact she gets excited when she finds out that Michel thinks her friend Sabrina is cute. However, the blurb and cover photo lead you to think that there’s a love triangle between Katie, Michel, and Sabrina:

Mixed Feelings

3.  Katie changes clothes in a separate locker room away from the boys. Scottie Silver sticks his eye into a peephole and giggles. Katie squirts him with water and has a chuckle about it. If I were her,  I’d be horrified that a group of boys has a peephole into my private changing space. Katie doesn’t even tattle to the coach or report it to anyone to get the hole plugged.

4.   Remember how Scottie treated Katie so heinously in book #2 when she tried out for the team? He teamed up with the guys and beat her up on the ice by playing super rough. He even taunted her about it afterward. In this book, Scottie again shows jerk behavior. Jealous that Michel is a better hockey player than him and jealous that Katie hangs around with Michel, Scottie acts like a jerk and freezes Katie out by sulking, yelling at her, and staring off into the distance. I get that he’s a middle school boy and perhaps his age makes him prone to doing stupid things, but wouldn’t it make better sense for him to just ask Katie if she’s into Michel rather than mistreat her? After Katie becomes injured in a hockey match, Scottie starts to play rougher toward the other team as a way of lashing out and getting rid of his frustration about her injury, and this behavior gets him called for a penalty, which puts the team in danger of losing the big game. However, Scottie gets out of the penalty box in time to assist in the game-winning goal Michel scores. Scottie does eventually apologize to Katie for being so mean to her, and she instantly forgives him.

5.   Sabs, Randy, and Allison all act strangely and mysteriously around Katie. For instance, they stop talking whenever she walks into the room. Her birthday is coming up, so it’s obvious to the reader that they’re sneaking behind Katie’s back to plan a surprise party. Katie doesn’t catch on, and instead she becomes hurt and worried that her friends are keeping secrets from her.

6. This book reminds us how physically tough ice hockey can be. Katie is injured in this one to the extent that she needs eight stitches in her chin. If she were my child, I’m not sure I’d let her continue to play hockey, and while her mother dotes on her and babies her a little after the injury, there’s never a mention of Katie giving up the sport.

7. For me, the best part about the book is reading about Katie’s reactions to her mother dating Jean Paul. Even though her father’s dead, Katie feels that her mother somehow shows disloyalty to his memory by dating another man. Neither Katie nor Emily want Mrs. Campbell to date, but they cannot say they dislike Jean Paul. He treats them cordially and makes Mrs. Campbell happy. Also, the mother wants Katie and her sister Emily to be happy and is nervous to introduce them to Jean Paul for the first time. Later in the series we’ll see both families struggle as members of a blended family, which is a real-word issue that I think a lot of readers connected with.

Come back later this week for my recap of The Ghost of Eagle Mountain. I remember loving that one when I was a child, and I hope I still enjoy it now.

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Girl Talk Series #2: Face Off!

Face Off--pic

When I started reading the Girl Talk book series in middle school, Face Off! was one of my favorites. I thought the message was cool: girls are just as good as boys. I still think the message is cool, but the overall storyline is annoying at times.

Katie Campbell, the blonde, blue-eyed preppy of the friend group narrates this one. It begins with her at the local ice skating rink whirling around and enjoying herself. She’s a great skater, good enough to try some moves she’s seen on figure skating competitions on television. As a kid, I knew nothing about hockey or ice skating, and I remember that it intrigued me to read about this girl in a state I’d never visited who was doing things I had never done. Anyway, Scottie Silver, 8th grade heartthrob, skates past Katie and snatches her hat off her head. She speeds off after him and chases him around the rink. Just as she grabs him by his belt loop, they knock a couple of other skaters over. No one is injured. Scottie grins at Katie and skates off. I reckon this is his way of telling her he likes her.

At dinner that night, Katie’s sister Emily mentions the incident with Scottie. Katie’s mother warns Katie to be ladylike and not play rough with boys. Katie’s mom keeps the house neat as a pin and expects her daughters to maintain a certain decorum. Katie feels pressure to conform.

Later, we see that Katie’s on the flag squad at her school, which means she’s a kind of cheerleader responsible for cheering at games and pep rallies while waving a flag around. Stacy Hansen (a.k.a. Stacy the Great) teases Katie one day after practice about wearing an undershirt instead of a bra. Flat-chested and sensitive, Katie is terrified of being teased by anyone about anything, so she runs into the flag coach’s office, hands in her flag girl uniform, and quits the team. Part of the decision to quit is that she doesn’t like being around Stacy so much, but another big motivator is that she doesn’t love being a flag girl and was only doing it because her mother wanted her to and because her best friend from last year (who has now moved away) tried out for the squad with her.

Anyway, Katie’s mother and her sister Emily are surprised and disappointed that Katie has quit the team, and Katie feels guilty. During lunch at school, Sabs mentions the upcoming hockey tryouts, and Scottie Silver starts acting obnoxious and basically saying he’s the best skater in the county and calling himself a one-man team. Randy Zak, who can’t stand Scottie’s egotistical bragging, stands up to him and proclaims Katie a better skater than Scottie and that Katie will try out for the boys’ hockey team. Katie, who embarrasses just as easily as Sabs did in the previous book, gets angry at Randy. Later, Randy says she thinks Katie should seriously consider trying out. Randy encourages Katie to show everyone that girls are just as good as boys. Katie’s courage grows, and she agrees to try out.

At Monday’s tryout, Coach Budd tells Katie in front of all the boys and spectators that there will never be a girl on his hockey team. Quiet Allison Cloud stands up and tells Coach Budd that Title IX exists partly to ensure that girls and boys be treated the same at public schools that receive federal funding, or something along those lines. Coach Budd relents and lets Katie try out. She is immediately “othered.” She skates toward the locker room to put on her uniform and pads, but then she’s stopped by Scottie, who reminds her that she cannot share the boys’ locker room. Flip, the one guy on the team who’s nice to Katie during tryout week, points out the visitors’ locker room and tells her she can change in there. Katie is wearing a bra that day, which she never wears and is only wearing now because of how Stacy teased her about the undershirt. Katie has cast aside her undershirts and now thinks that wearing a bra is the more grown-up thing to do, which is silly since she has no tits. Funny story, I had B/C cups when I was in sixth grade, and I decided not to wear a bra to school one day because they were scratchy and I hated them. One of my classmates called me out because my tits were bouncing uncontrollably. I don’t feel sorry for Katie for taking longer to develop. I looked like a grown woman at twelve, and it was not fun. Anyway, Katie takes off her bra and puts on her hockey uniform in the changing room. However, the bra gets hooked to the back of her pants and she doesn’t realize it until she skates out onto the ice and everyone laughs at her. She’s humiliated, and her friends have to go into the locker room and give her a pep talk until she can stop crying and muster the courage to go back to the tryout.

She makes it through the first day of tryouts and then goes to Fitzie’s, the afterschool hangout. It’s a restaurant with a 1950s theme. They serve hamburgers and ice cream floats and banana splits, etc. Anyway, at Fitzie’s Scottie warns her that the guys will start to play rough with her on the ice soon, only it sounds more like a threat than a warning. I’m starting to like Scottie less and less. First, he brags about how great he is at lunch, and then he threatens a girl with violence. Granted, Katie is trying out for a dangerous, physical contact sport, but the way Scottie takes pleasure in the idea of her possibly getting hurt is too much. Katie and the other girls only seem to like him because he’s cute, which shows how shallow they all are.

At home, Katie’s mom tells her that she heard from someone at the grocery store that Katie has tried out for the hockey team. They get into a fight because Mom wants Katie to give up hockey and Katie is determined to go through with the tryout. Katie winds up screaming at her mother, which she claims she’s never done.

On day three of tryouts, the guys gang up on Katie. Every time she gets the puck, they knock her down or hip check (whatever that means). Even the guys on her team during the scrimmage don’t try to help or work with her. She bravely takes a beating. Afterward, she’s already sore and knows she’ll be bruised the next day. She can barely move her arms well enough to change out of her uniform and is trying to muster the strength to walk home when Scottie picks a fight with her outside the rink. He says she better stop being a wimp if she wants to play a man’s game. Katie, rightfully fed up with his crap by that point, tells him that he is so intimidated by a fast skating girl that he and his friends had to beat her up to feel better about themselves. I was so proud of Katie for telling him off. Then, Scottie leans over and kisses her cheek. Ugh! It’s like those old movies where a man and woman argue passionately and then do something sexual like kiss passionately or jump in bed. Katie and Scottie don’t jump in bed, though, thank God. Instead, after Scottie pecks her cheek he runs away. Katie’s dumbfounded and also excited that he’s kissed her. I get that baby girl’s hormones are raging, but I still think Scottie is a jerk and not nearly good enough for Katie. Anyway, Katie tells Sabs about it that night on the phone and Sabs is in disbelief but also delighted that Scottie, the “make out King” has kissed Katie.

On Friday, Katie finds out that she made the team. Teachers and even kids she doesn’t know well congratulate her. Scottie calls her that night to remind her to be at the rink on time for their Saturday game. It’s a short and awkward conversation, and he hangs up without saying goodbye. Katie calls and tells Sabs about Scottie’s call. Then Sabs calls Allison, who interprets Scottie’s behavior. She says Scottie likes Katie and that he was probably embarrassed to call her and so he made up some excuse about letting her know when to arrive for the game. Allison was always the intuitive one in these books. Earlier in this book she’s the one to notice Scottie watching Katie, even before Scottie snatches Katie’s hat and skates away with it. I like that Allison is intuitive, but I think someone should warn Katie to stay away from a guy like Scottie. First his arrogance is on display, and then he physically abuses Katie. Kissing her after trying his best to bruise her body is problematic to me. I would’ve liked Scottie a lot better if he’d been supportive of her or stood up for her during the tryout.

During the first game, Katie rides the bench until the starting left wing, Brian, is injured. Katie has to substitute for him. She steals the puck from the other team and passes it to Scottie, who scores the winning goal right before the buzzer. Everyone chants her name. Afterward, the coach tells her that he knew she was a winner when he chose her for the team. Scottie apologizes for being obnoxious to her on the phone, though he offers no apologies for ganging up on her during tryouts. She instantly tells him she forgives him. Ugh! Then he asks her to go to Fitzie’s for a soda. Stacy, who is supposed to be his girlfriend, storms off with her friends. Scottie offers to carry Katie’s bag to the restaurant, but she tells him she can handle it. The book ends with them laughing over her decision to carry her own bag.

Overall, I do like the themes of this book. There are two that I picked out. One is to never let bullies determine who you are or what you should do. The other theme is that hard work and perseverance pay off. These are good lessons for a middle schooler to learn. Still, I wish Scottie wasn’t such a jerk, and the way Katie easily forgives his behavior bugs me. Plus, Scottie has no redeeming qualities aside from being sooo cute. I guess his apology was a good gesture, but the fact that he bullied her to begin with irks the heck out of me.

Other observations:

  1. Stacy is “going out” with Scottie in this book, which I guess means that they hang out after school. Stacy was also “going out” with Alec, the boy Sabs crushed on in the previous book. Not trying to slut shame her, but how many boyfriends could a girl have during middle school? We’re also told that Stacy dated Nick Robbins back in sixth grade, so we know she’s had a least three boyfriends by age 12. She was also wearing diamond earrings at the ice skating rink in the first chapter of this book. This chick acts twenty-five instead of twelve.
  2.  Allison looks beautiful as always on the cover of this book, though she looks about eighteen instead of thirteen. Randy looks like her mullet-haired mom.
  3. In one scene Randy wears a flapper-style dress and cats-eye glasses. Where does she get such an outfit? I go thrifting sometimes, but I never find flapper-style dresses at Goodwill, and these books were written in the early 90s, so I know Randy didn’t order a 1920s-style dress off the internet. Unsolved mystery.

 

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Girl Talk #1: Welcome to Junior High

When I was in middle school, I read several popular book series catered to young girls: Sweet Valley High (and Twins and University, too), Baby-Sitter’s Club, and even one or two Canby Hall books. Though I read more Sweet Valley than anything else, looking back I see that series was the worst of the lot. The selfish, shallow characters promoted unhealthy and amoral ideals for young girls. Despite having read hundreds of those books, I remember the plots of only a dozen or so, which fails the book test. For me, the one question book test is this: Do you remember the plot of ______ years after having read it? If you don’t, perhaps the book didn’t have a profound impact on you.

The Sweet Valley books were re-capped on a website called The Dairi Burger, which I followed a decade ago. Robin Hardwick does an amazing job recapping those books, and she does it with side-splitting humor, too. She even calls the books out on their crap. The authors had a habit of fat-shaming and the characters bullied people who were different. Even the practical, “smart” and “kind” twin often cheated on her boyfriend. Every book dedicated space to fawning over how good-looking the twins were. The twins’ mother was often mistaken for their older sister, and other women were so jealous of her looks that someone once tried to kidnap her and steal her face for a face transplant. No joke. Those books were beyond ridiculous.

The Girl Talk books had a profound impact on me. I remember the four best friends on which the books focused: Katie Campbell, Allison Cloud, Sabrina Wells, and Randy Zak. Just browsing over the books’ covers online, I remember the plots of most of the ones I read. These books weren’t as readily available as the Sweet Valley series or the Babysitter’s Club. I believe I bought my Girl Talk books via a school book fair’s catalogue. I never saw them for sale at the Barnes and Noble or at Books a Million like the other popular girls series. I was heartbroken when the books stopped after #45. And I couldn’t find them in local bookstores. Now, with the use of Amazon and Abebooks, I can go back and read them again. I still have a few that I bought when I was a kid, and I can order the others.

Girl Talk #1

Here goes. Katie, Allison, Sabrina, and Randy live in the small town of Acorn Falls, Minnesota. They’re 12-13 years old, and in the first book, which I’m re-capping here, they have just begun 7th grade. Each book is narrated by one of the four main characters. Sabrina Wells narrates this first book called Welcome to Junior High. We find out that Sabrina has four older brothers, including a twin brother named Sam. She’s bubbly and loves fashion magazines and horoscopes. She’s also boy-crazy. In the span of this first book (all of the books are around 120 pages and printed in big script, so that you could read one in about two hours), Sabrina has crushes on three different boys: her brother’s friend Nick, a ninth grade boy named Spike who plays in a local band, and an 8th grade boy named Alec whose lap she lands on while trying to slip out of the 8th grade math class she accidentally walked into while running late on the first day of school. Alec is the one she crushes on first, and she loves that he’s an “older man.” He looks just like Tom Cruise, her favorite actor. Later, when she meets Spike, she thinks he reminds her of Johnny Depp, her other favorite actor. It’s amazing how these books are so dated (this first one came out in 1990), yet some of the cultural references remain the same. I guess some girls still like Cruise and Depp, though they’re kinda aged heartthrobs now. I guess if these books were updated, the young girls would like…yikes, you can tell I’m almost 40. No idea who the girls would swoon over. Lol. Until I re-read this one, I didn’t realize Johnny Depp was so famous already in 1990. But I guess Nightmare on Elm Street and Platoon had already been released, and Scissorhands came out that same year.

Anyway, here’s the plot. The homecoming dance is coming up, and the whole story leads up to that big event. Sabrina wants to go with Alec the 8th grader, but he’s already been spotted hanging around with the principal’s daughter, Stacy Hansen, a snooty 7th grade girl who wears heels already and always dresses nice. Sabrina also thinks Nick Robbins, her brother’s friend, is cute, but he’s in the 7th grade with her, and she’s decided she only likes “older” men. Nick asks Sabrina to the dance while they are lining up to march in the town parade. Nick accidentally knocks her over with his drum, and she tries to talk to him but clumsily spits out her clarinet reed. Cute scene. Anyway, Sabrina agrees to go to the dance with Nick, but later when she is decorating the gym with Randy, Katie, and Allison, this 9th grader named Spike (who has black eyes like Johnny Depp) comes in and asks her to dance. Nick walks in and sees her with Spike and is obviously jealous, only Sabrina is too dense to realize it. Later, Nick calls and says he won’t go to the dance with her because he has already asked someone else. Sabrina is crushed, but her friends talk her into going to the dance anyway. At first she pouts because she sees Nick talking to some other girl she doesn’t like and because Alec is dancing with Stacy. Then, Spike, whose band is playing at the dance, literally puts a spotlight on her and dedicates a song to her. Nick comes forward and asks her to dance. Though she shouldn’t even be talking to him since he dumped her, they talk as they dance. He explains that he was angry when he saw her with Spike, and he admits he never asked anyone else to the dance. They agree to be friends. The book and the night end with Sabrina hanging out with Randy, Katie, and Allison.

There are some side plots. One is that Katie goes to the dance with Sabrina’s twin brother, Sam, and for reasons unknown this bothers Sabrina. Randy is new to town from New York City. Her haircut is spiked on top, and when Sabrina first meets her Randy wears a leather bomber jacket, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt with palm trees on it. (Sooo cool, according to Sabrina.) Allison is the quiet one who is Native American. I remember being enthralled by her when I was a child. Most of the books I read had majority white characters. I’d never read a story with Native Americans until I read Allison’s character. Her personality is bookish and quiet, very similar to mine. I used to share these books with my girl cousin when I was in middle school, and Allison was her favorite character. I liked Allison and Katie the best when I was a kid. I wonder if my opinion will change as I go through them again.

Grade: B. Sabrina is a little too boy crazy for my taste. She’s still quite nice, though. I also like that Randy kept standing up for Sabrina whenever Stacy tried to bully and belittle her. In one scene, Stacy and her friends steal Sabrina’s self-improvement notebook, which is basically a diary in which Sabrina writes about her goals to better herself, and Stacy and her friends read the thing aloud in front of a group of kids in the hallway. Sabrina is embarrassed, because anything embarrasses a tween-age girl. Randy steps in, snatches the book away and gives it back to Sabrina. She also steps in during another scene, knocks into Stacy and spills Stacy’s entire lunch all over her. Ah. Seventh grade scandals.

Next time, I’ll recap #2, and we’ll learn more about Katie Campbell, who narrates that one.

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