Tag: Girl Talk book series

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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