Amazon.com Review
Sixth grade is about to begin, and Bess Cunningham is gearing up to be cool. With a bunch of wild new outfits and an important job in the school play, Bess is convinced she'll get a lot of attention--at least more than she gets from her overbooked parents. With a lawyer dad and a teacher mom, both of whom are passionate about volunteering for a soup kitchen, Bess sometimes feels like she would have to eat out of a Dumpster before they'd notice her. But when she meets an elderly woman named Gracie who actually
does eat other people's discarded food, she begins to realize there are real human faces on the scruffy people her parents serve at the soup kitchen. Soon she and her best friend, Ethan, are deeply entrenched in Gracie's life, and in helping establish a shelter for homeless women. Bess is amazed to discover that even without her crazy wardrobe, she has managed to make new friends
and make a difference.
For preteens on the never-ending search for identity, middle school can be a brutal place. Wanting to be noticed, wanting to be invisible, wanting to be grown up, wanting to be a kid...life isn't easy. Watching Bess's revelations unfurl will be tremendously helpful for kids on the cusp of adolescence. Not surprisingly, as she and her friends help others, they begin to feel better about themselves, and, guess what--their popularity grows as well. As shown in Hard Love, Ellen Wittlinger's ability to tackle tough issues from tricky perspectives is memorable and entertaining. (Ages 9 to 13) --Emilie Coulter
From Publishers Weekly
At the onset of her sixth-grade year, narrator Bess's campaign to be "cool" includes reinventing her wardrobe around some funky vintage clothes. It's while sifting through such items in a thrift shop that she first meets Gracie, a homeless woman, and later, while helping serve Sunday dinner at a homeless shelter (at her parents' insistence), Bess sees her again. Gracie inspires Bess to rethink her priorities ("It made me kind of sick to think about her sleeping outside someplace, her big, old shoes poking into the sidewalk"); she becomes less concerned with her own social status as she searches for a way to keep Gracie fed and sheltered. In this bittersweet novel, Wittlinger (Hard Love; What's in a Name) offers a convincing look at a middle schooler's awakening to social problems in her community. Although readers may sympathize with Gracie, they will likely relate more to Bess and her day-to-day trials: getting snubbed by the popular crowd, finding out the boy she likes is more interested in her best friend and fighting for the attention of her charity-minded parents. Unfortunately, the book's strong political statement tends to overpower the subtler, equally relevant message regarding Bess's internal maturation. Ages 8-12. (Nov.)
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