This is one I found at the library and marks my return to young adult literature. During college, I had a children’s literature course with the requirement of reading everyday for 20 minutes (the smug part of me can’t help but remember all of the elementary education majors in the course who were outraged by this requirement. There was no way they had the time to read for 20 minutes and choose their own books. Cruelty!). I loved the project and read (duh) way more than 20 minutes daily in children’s and adolescent literature. It was also what made me think seriously about library science. I would love to be a children’s or youth service librarian someday.
Anyway, I enjoyed this book in a mild way and thought the narrator had a realistic teenage voice. Having grown up in such a normal happy family it is sometimes hard for me to believe that parents can be so horribly oblivious to their childrens’ lives and the parts with the “wicked” stepmother made me feel sad and yet she wasn’t as wicked as many real stepmothers probably are. I was more upset by the narrator’s jerk of a father who fulfilled every afterschool special requirement for a distant father with a new trophy wife who couldn’t be bothered. But in the end the father finally took his daughter’s side and voila! A happy ending all around!
