Synopses & Reviews
To grieving Jasmine, Maddies a rich kid with no problems. To lonely Maddie, Jasmine is all cavalier-cool in their tame Connecticut town.True friends they are not. Yet each hopes the other might save her. Can Maddie give Jasmine what she needs? Could Jasmine rescue Maddie from the outskirts of the crowd? When Jasmine steals Maddies heirloom ring, just how far will she go to keep it? In alternating chapters, Maddie and Jasmine take turns weaving their story about friendship and coming of age.
Review
"Can two seemingly opposite girls become friends? . . . the spot-on-cover will entice readers who will identify with the pain of middle school, enjoy the well-developed secondary characters and applaud the girls' growth." --Kirkus Reviews
Review
". . . Though their circumstances are vastly different, their worries and insecurities prompt them to similar behaviors, namely theft, and their struggles with dishonesty and its aftermath are sensitively portrayed as they learn to approach each other with empathy rather than jealousy. Both girls are budding wordsmiths, so their observations are peppered with witty similes and vivid images, and the poems they share at their teacher's prompting are heartfelt and lyrical. In the tradition of Frances O'Roark Dowell, Pakkala manages to capture a poignant moment in tween life, when friendships strain and girls are struggling to find their voices and assert their identities. Mistakes and tensions are interlaced with tender moments and liberating laughter, self-protective lies with explosive honesty; this is not girl, interrupted but girl, launched." --The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Synopsis
Friends/enemies (“frenemies”) Maddie and Jasmine could not be more different from each other. Maddie grew up in affluent suburbia; Jasmine just moved to a trailer park by way of Brooklyn. Yet each hopes the other might save her. Could Maddie give Jasmine the things she needs? Could Jasmine rescue Maddie from the outskirts of the crowd? Christine Pakkala masterfully weaves their voices as each tells her side of this story, letting the girls clash on and off the page. As tensions build, they’re on a collision course for disaster—and for an ending in which they’ll discover that they might just be able to save each other, but not at all in the ways they think.
About the Author
Christine Pakkala grew up in Idaho and studied English and Journalism at the University of Idaho before heading east to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop (MFA, Poetry Writing, 1993). She was a Fulbright Scholar in 1994 in Helsinki, Finland, where she translated modern Finnish poetry. She has taught seventh- and ninth-grade English at Horace Mann School in New York. Last-But-Not-Least Lola Going Green, Christine's debut middle-grade novel, is on the Fall ’13 BMP list. She lives in Westport, CT.