Tag: YA fiction

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 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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The Long-Awaited Conclusion to the Logan Family Series

I’ve loved Mildred D. Taylor’s books since I was a child. In eighth grade, I listened as my Georgia history teacher, Mr. Benton, read aloud from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry each week. I fell in love with Cassie Logan, the book’s intuitive, beautiful protagonist. The other books I read as a child featured mostly white female protagonists. Sure, there was Allison Cloud, the bookish Native American girl from Girl Talk, and there were Claudia Kishi and Jessi Ramsey from The Babysitter’s Club, but other than those few the characters in the books I read were mostly white.

The white authors I read frequently reflected on how blue a character’s eyes were, and I could always tell what the authors’ beauty standards were. The authors of the Sweet Valley series loved long blonde hair and tan skin (but not black skin) and a size six body. In the stories I write, the characters don’t have blue eyes, and I don’t favor the ultra-thin beauty standard either. I often struggle to describe my beautiful black female characters without using food comparisons. Yes, that’s a thing. I’ve read books by writers, both black and white, who say a black woman is peanut butter brown, has skin that shines like pudding, or is the color of a pecan. Food. Food. Food.

Reading a book series in which the black female telling the story doesn’t suffer low self-esteem is something that gave me hope as a child. Stop for a moment and consider the most popular dark-skinned black women in literature. There’s Celie in The Color Purple, the narrator of Salvage the Bones, and of course Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye. Though there’s hope at the end of The Color Purple, overall Celie and the other protagonists from the aforementioned books are stepped on, shat on, and all but tarred and feathered by their tormentors.

Then we have Cassie Logan, a young woman who is smart and hard-working and has a life that, even in Mississippi in the 1930s-1940s, isn’t completely hopeless. I’m proud of Cassie Logan, proud as if she were my own daughter. I love how her family sticks up for one another and stays together. I can write beautiful black females because another author came before me and wrote Cassie Logan and did it like a boss. Mildred Taylor didn’t write black women with white readers in mind. She didn’t say that Cassie was pretty “for a colored girl” or that she had white features, like thin lips or a thin nose to make her somehow more palatable or attractive to white people.

Today, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought the last book in the Logan family series: All the Days Past, All the Days to Come. (This says a lot because I never buy those expensive ass brand-new hardcovers–the last one I bought was Harper Lee’s second novel–and I prefer to buy used books cheaply.) For the next week, I will catch up with Cassie Logan, who last narrated the series in a book released in 1990. Yes, it’s been thirty years since The Road to Memphis was first published, and the other books Taylor has written since then were both prequels and not narrated by Cassie. This new book was not only a long time coming, but one I did not expect until last summer when I saw it available for a pre-release purchase on Audible. For years, I’d thought Taylor had passed away. I kept wondering if she’d died before finishing the series. For years, I’ve wanted to know what became of Cassie’s family after WWII. Did her brothers serve in the armed forces? Did Cassie pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer? I wanted to know if Cassie would marry the lawyer she met in 1941 or if she’d marry Moe, the sweet man from her community. Now, sitting here typing this, with the newest and last installment of the beloved series, I wonder, will this book, like all my favorite books, break my heart?

 

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