New Sweet Valley High

I don't know about you guys, but when I was in junior high (yeah when I was in school we still had junior high and not middle school) all of my friends and I read the Sweet Valley High books.

Well guess what?

It seems like the creator and writer of that series is working on a book called Sweet Valley Confidential

These books were so cheesy back in the day, but then again most romance novels in the 80s were still pretty cheesy. That doesn't stop me from wanting to read this as soon as it comes out sometime next year though.

I can only imagine what Liz and Jessica have been up to since their high school days!

Book Review: Almost April

I discovered this book by Zoa Sherburne while cleaning. I hate getting rid of books when I'm unsure of whether or not I've read them. I'm glad I read this one.

This book was released sometime in the late 1950s or very early 60s, but oddly enough it really stands the test of time.

Karen is a 17 year old girl who is moving across the country to be with her father and his wife. Her mother died a few years previously (of cancer, we presume) and she's been living with her grandmother, who is very crotchety.

When she arrives in Oregen, Karen isn't sure how to behave. Its part of what makes the story relevant now. Karen is out of her element in her new surroundings. She's not sure how to act, or how she wants to act. She's a little resentful of Jan, her father's new wife, who is having the baby that her own mother longed for.

I love Karen's determination when she meets the town bad boy, Nels and later his mother. This young woman has strength and she shows her love for the people in her life so well, even when she is being stubborn.

I only wish Zoa would have spent some time telling us a bit more about Karen's mother and her illness and the reason for her mom's divorce from Thad Hale. It might have made it easier to understand the characters more.

All in all, this was a great book. It was written very well and was better than a lot of the young adult fiction that I read when I was growing up. I was going to pass this book on to Goodwill but now I'm not sure if I will. I may keep it, to revisit later.

Book Review: Neil R. Selden The Great Lakeside High Experiment

This book is so old I can't even find a cover photo of it! Its a young adult novel I should have read about 20 years ago, but didn't. Or at least I think I didn't because nothing about the book was familiar to me.

Here's the jist of it and why I was totally unimpressed and yet compelled to finish it.

The popular crowd consisting of Jen, Larry, Dolph and Wayne come up with an idea to make senior year more exciting. The idea: take a plain girl and make her glamorous and through their friendship popular. The whole My Fair Lady/Pygmalion thing.

Not a bad thing, except Maude, the guinea pig in the experiment ends up being nice and falling for Jen's guy, Larry.

Here's where I have issues with the story. Its told from both Maude and Jen's point of view. Jen is not a nasty popular bitch out to hurt Maude, but the writer feels the need to cause Jen some pain in the end, as some sort of payback for her being "The Popular" one to start with. To tell what caused that would give away the plot and the book may be worth reading for some tweens and lovers of young adult fiction.

I felt that the ending came about too quickly and the friends that were Jen's originally lacked substance then and her boyfriend who was falling for Maude was just as bad, even with some of the plot twists Selden wrote to make him likable. For me they didn't make any more or less likable, they just made him strange.

As for the girls, I felt sorry for both Maude and Jen. They each had family problems to deal with and they both felt constricted by their life. The ending was supposedly happy with all fences mended, but it left me feeling like there was so much more to be resolved, especially with Jen.

I'd give this book to a 12-14 year old, but I think older teens would feel like I do, that it left a lot to be desired.