From School Library Journal
Grade 6-8–Recently relocated across the country with her mom and stepfamily, 13-year-old Raisin sends a series of blogs and e-mails to her friends back home. She has never been kissed and desperately wants her first to be with CJ Mullin. The story revolves around her schemes to make it happen. While the novel begins with a fresh voice, the plot starts to drag midpoint and fails to keep readers interest. Girls looking for laughs about teenage angst written in diary form would be better served by Louise Rennisons Georgia Nicholson books or Meg Cabots The Princess Diaries (both HarperCollins).
–Angela M. Boccuzzi-Reichert, Merton Williams Middle School, Hilton, NY Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr. 6-9. In this sequel to
The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez (2005), seventh-grader Raisin continues her blog with two California girlfriends. Her current preoccupation is classmate CJ Mullen (who works as a cartoonist with Raisin on a zine,
CoolerThanYou) and getting him to kiss her. Predictably, Raisin is a lot more naive than she seems at first: she doesn't recognize Spin the Bottle when she encounters it at a party; she misses clues that her best friends, Lynn and Jeremy, have become a couple; and she passes up an opportunity for a practice kiss with a boy she doesn't care about. Goldschmidt's strength--her ear for frank middle-school dialogue--will endear her to readers, even as the language shocks many adults. This title can stand alone, but it's sure to prompt requests for
Secret Blog. Give this to fans of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice books and Meg Cabot's
Princess Diaries series.
Kay WeismanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
