by: Jerry Spinelli My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I'll start off by saying that young adult/teen fiction, is not my genre of choice, so that may have something to do with my only giving it two stars. I thought the book was cute, and it does make a good point. But there were a few things that bothered me about it. 1. There was SO MUCH stupid drama, but considering the intended audience, this point probably isn't valid as a complaint. But the drama bugged me. 2. I didn't think it was believable how mean the student body was to this one poor girl. I could see a group of students being this mean, or even blaming her for the basketball team losing, but not the WHOLE school. Maybe my high school experience was completely different from everyone else's, but there were lots of little groups that conformed to each other for sure, but the whole school did not conform to anything, really, as a whole. So I find it hard to believe that an entire student body would shun a girl for being compassionate to the hurt player of another team. Especially because she wasn't doing mean things, but lots of odd nice things. I understand and agree that on occasion she didn't know her boundaries, but that doesn't make her a criminal. Maybe the author thought it had to be all or nothing to get his point across, but it kind of bugged. 3. I wasn't a big fan of everyone thinking that homeschooling was a good explanation for Stargirl's "weirdness". I know plenty of weird people who were not homeschooled, and plenty of normal people who were. But that's not really a big issue, just a point I wanted to make.
I really liked the character of Stargirl. I thought she was really well done in all her excentric behaviors. Of all the characters I think I connected emotionally with her the best. I felt so bad for her, that even her own boyfriend couldn't just accept her for who she was. I'm glad she had Doris as a friend.
So, I don't know. The book was pretty good. It had a good message. It was not my favorite. If you like young adult fiction, you might like it.
1 comment:
I read this in Jr. High and I didn't love it either. I think all your complaints are valid enough. If you are someone who doesn't want or like drama in your own life (and knowing you in high school I know don't)then why would you just want to read about it all? But the girl was funny, so it was easy enough to read.
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