After accepting an invitation to Dreamland, young Julie finally meets her real mother, an interpreter of dreams, and feels, at first, that she is better than her adoptive parents, yet things take a sudden turn and Julie soon realizes the difference between fantasy and reality.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Tomey (The Neptune Princess) explores adoption-related issues in this initially far-fetched yet intermittently touching story. Julie thinks life with her dowdy, 50-something parents couldn't be more stultifying?they are utterly predictable and virtually smothering in their adoration of her. On her 14th birthday, Julie is lured to a meeting with her birth mother (who has the unlikely, retro-movie-star name Loretta Young). Operating the dream-interpretation equivalent of a psychic hotline, Loretta, whose flamboyant, gum-cracking, trash-fashion persona represents the appealingly exotic antithesis of Julie's flannel-slipper-wearing parents, is just this side of a caricature. Lying to her parents, Julie spends her Saturdays with Loretta and her wheelchair-bound son?Julie's half-brother?and begins giving Loretta the valuable objects laid aside for Julie in a hope chest. As Julie's lies to her parents multiply, so does her sense of guilt. Personalities painted in broad strokes early on reveal somewhat more nuance as the story progresses. The revelation that Loretta accepted cash from Julie's parents in order to go through with the adoption raises valuable questions, and ends the novel on a far less pat note than that on which it began. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-9?Julie Solus, 14, is dissatisfied with virtually every aspect of her life, particularly with her boring and overprotective adoptive parents. Enter Loretta Young (not the actress), Julie's birth mother and a dream interpreter. Julie is fascinated by the woman's unconventional lifestyle and gradually finds herself immersed in a web of lies as she attempts to hide the discovery of her birth mother from her parents. Ultimately the lies unravel and the teen is forced to face some very difficult truths. This novel is hard to read as it suffers from uninteresting characters and a sluggish, predictable plot. The setting is unimaginative and the characters are truly one-dimensional. The Queen of Dreamland pales in comparison to other books of the genre.?Robyn Ryan Vandenbroek, formerly at Otterville Public School, Ontario
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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