5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raisin, where were you when I was growing up?, March 24, 2008
I bought The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez for my close friend's 10-year old daughter, Molly. Molly is the kind of kid you think knows more about being ten than you do about being 40+, precocious, razor sharp and eating up more knowledge and truth about the world with each passing day. I honestly worried that I could not find a book good and wise enough for her.
After she read the book, Molly called me that very day to tell me what she thought of it. She was so over-the-top crazy about the book, speaking a mile-a-minute, that I knew it couldn't have been her parents that put her up to it -- she really was in love with the book. What's more, she insisted that I read the read the book so we could talk about it. She even did something which I think few children have ever done - she gave me back my gift just so I could read the book - what truer endorsement could there be?
And so I decided to spend an afternoon with Raisin..... Problem was, my overly-affectionate dog sometimes makes it very difficult for me to read anything at home, not to mention the lure of 227 channels and a perennially overflowing email Inbox. Still...I promised Molly and wanted to see for myself what this book has to offer.
So off I went to my local Starbucks for a good sit-down with Raisin. I must admit that at first I took pains to carefully shield the cover, as my Chicago neighborhood is stuffed to the brim with `concerned parents' in sensible shoes on the lookout for any signs of peculiar behavior from fellows of my demographic. This is, after all, a book primarily intended for "tweener" girls.....And I am at the opposite end of the scale in all respects.
I braved the local scrutiny for the first few minutes, lapped up my comically-overpriced Vanilla Somethingoranotheraccino and was quickly lost in Raisin's world, a fine place to be for kids of any age. Raisin's creator, Judy Goldschmidt, is a writer of prodigious comic gifts, deftly balancing the creation of a realistic character with enough laugh-out-loud moments to keep even the most jaded child or adult rapt from cover-to-cover. The comedy plays equally well for all ages, not easy to accomplish. I even found myself blushing at times, not typically a cause for concern except of course, as detailed above, one is a 40'ish man reading a tweener book in a crowded cafe filled with strollers, spitball shooting 5-year olds and hawk-eyed PTA'ers.
Raisin is a character in the best sense of the word, the kind of kid any reader would want to follow through mishap and triumph, lessons learned and mistakes made. In fact, I saw much of Molly in her and this seems great praise to the both of them.
Raisin's insights and witticisms can't help but create constant chortles and knowing nods in any reader. I hope everybody will read this book and I don't want to offer any "spoilers" but amidst all the great scenes in this book, one scene struck me as so true and wise I have to comment. Raisin attends a birthday dinner at Antonio's only to realize, much too late, that her schoolmates are not celebrating her birthday but their friend Fiona's birthday. Raisin's heart-in-her-feet sense of humiliation and nausea takes any reader back to those sensitive days of early adolescence - when the slightest social ill-wind causes life-shattering embarrassment -- and you remember feelings you didn't even know you could remember. And yet with Raisin by your side, you make it through. The scene is, for all the pathos, positively hilarious while at the same time letting young readers know, as they learn throughout the book, that the challenges of the early teens are ones we all share. The book is simply wise in all corners and all ends, and has to make any kid reading it feel more comfortable in his or her own skin, always a challenge with children of this age group.
The book not only suggests but makes plain that Ms. Goldschmidt is nothing less than a great writer. What she achieves with this book stands with the accomplishments of any contemporary work of fiction I've read in the last 10 years. I am certainly going to be buying the other books in the Raisin Rodriguez series for Molly, my other friends' children and not least of all for myself. I trust that the books already published are not the last we shall hear from Raisin, PiaBallerina, Kweenclaudia or Judy Goldschmidt. Seeing what she has done for my understanding of kids today and myself as a kid, I would love to see what Judy Goldschmidt could do when writing for 40-ish men and women. One can only hope...
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blog-ilarious!, November 18, 2004
This review is from: The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez (Hardcover)
This book is delightfully funny! It may be written for the 10 and up age group, but I've reached the ripe old age of 40 and this book had me rolling around in hysterics. Raisin's blog-eyed view of the world provides a perfect venue for this story with its roundly developed characters and razor-sharp wit. I write for this age group myself, and read tons of young adult novels - this is one of the few I'm immediately passing on to my own daughter. Raisin Rocks!
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