Customer Reviews

What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Children's literature is filled with stories of kids with dead or emotionally dead parents and the emotional angst involved with adolescence. I have read hundreds of them. Some are much better than others. This is one of the better ones.

Gabby sounds and acts real. She and her friends talk like preteens. They all have problems and they are all struggling to understand themselves and sometimes each other. Gabby is sympathetic without being pathetic. Gabby knows loneliness, but she also knows love and friendship. She has been an outcast and she struggles to understand why she is on the outside, thinking it is because she is motherless. She learns that her mother's death and absence are a critical part of her emotional make-up, but not the only reasons for her problems. The other kids around her have problems, too. Problems are a fact in any life.

Baskin has written an emotionally reachable book without sinking into pathos. The characters don't want to be pitied, not even Gabby at her worst moments. They just want to be understood.

This book is a great read and I will be very surprised if it doesn't get some recognition from various medal-awarding groups. I am wholeheartedly promoting it to the kids in my local library.

If you like Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's "Alice" series, you will definitely like this book.

I'm a boy and I read the book and I loved it. It's about a 12 year old girl name Gabby Weis growing up without a mother. I found the book surprisingly funny and interesting. Baskin did a great job writting about Gabbys' struggles through life and middle school . I'd recommened this book to all kids boys and girls ages 9-15. This was a great book and I will definate
ly read her next book. You should really get the book it was great.

This book is the best!! I couldn't put it down! Best of all it takes place in my town, so I know where the book is talking about! This book is about a girl growing up without a mother, and the hardships she faces. Like her dads girlfriend Cleo and her brother. The book is a true story!! The characters names are made up, buty their based on real people. The worst thing about the book is that her mother really died that way!! But this book is a REALLY good book!! I hope she writes a sequal!!

This is a excellent book!! It takes place in my home town!! She even came to visit our school! Best of all its true!! The characters names are made up and some parts are also made up...but the rest is true!! Its about a girl growing up without a mother, and the hardships she faces. Its really interesting! I couldn't put it down! Its really heart warming!! Best of all I can really relate to her, because I know where she is talking about!!

Like her heroine, Gabby Weiss, Baskin captures the charming details that make each girl and woman special, whether it's our technique for applying hand lotion all the way up to our age-defining wrinkly elbows, the way we chop raw vegetables or use a paper towel when we wash mushrooms, the clothes we wear, the kind of toothpaste we use, all the things that make up our personal style. Gabby watches and records in her journal everything she thinks will help her figure out how to go from girl to woman. She must make the journey without her mother who died when Gabby was three. Gabby hopes that her father's current girlfriend, Cleo Bloom, will be the one, the keeper, her "Mom-to-be."

While Gabby is hopeful, her older brother, Ian, sees Cleo as a threat to the status quo. Baskin deftly portrays Gabby's relationship with him: "Sometimes Ian came just close enough to being nice to me that I could see some potential." The father, as self-absorbed artist, could have been entirely unsympathetic, but there is more to his story than we see at first.

And let's not forget the YBFs, the very best friends, and all the little things like chocolate glaze on a doughnut that add up to the history of a relationship. That make it comfortable and extraordinary. Gabby's best friend, Taylor, has her mother, who is inordinately fond of white things; but sometimes a mother can be less than what we need.

Gabby's experiences at school, the dreaded "home economics" project--"don't forget the heavy cream," the school outcast, the cool kids, all are authentic. Baskin knows these kids through their counterparts in the real world.

The second half of Gabby's story is compelling, suspenseful, and ultimately beautiful. Share What Every Girl (except me) Knows with your best friend, who might just be your daughter.

Gabby's mother died when she was three years old, leaving her with just her father and her older brother. Because of that, Gabby always feels like she is missing out on something important. She doesn't feel like she knows how to act, how to be a girl and how to grow up to be a woman. Gabby knows that if she just had a mother, she'd be able to figure out exactly what to do all of the time. She even keeps notebooks of the things she's learned about being a girl from observing women such as her friends' mothers.

This year things are starting to come together for Gabby. Her father is steadily dating a woman, Cleo, and it seems as though Gabby might finally have a woman in the house who will be able to teach her all of the things she needs to know. Plus, Gabby has a best friend, a new girl named Taylor who Gabby defended from the snobby girls on the first day of school. Taylor and Gabby immediately hit it off and are practically inseparable from the time they meet each other.

There is some resentment building under the surface, though. Gabby is jealous that Taylor has a mother who seems so great, while Taylor thinks her life is hard because her parents are getting divorced. Can these hurdles be overcome?

I liked Gabby's process of coming to terms with her life. She saw a problem and tried to think of ways to take care of it. I also liked the way Gabby and Taylor interacted with each other. The girls at Gabby's school seemed a bit too nice to be realistic, though. Even thought there was a snobby crowd, they weren't nearly as mean as girls really are.

I thought this book was a real page turner. I enjoyed the book because there were real life situations. This is especially true among the middle school years when girls really need their mothers more than ever and Gabby didn't have hers. She had a good friend and her dad's girlfriend but that was not enough, she missed her mom. I think any person would enjoy this book from a kid to an adult. I highly recommend it.

I teach girls who are the characters age. I found this book moving, refreshing, and very well written. I found myself relating to this twelve year old girl in a way I didn't realize was possible. Please take the time to read this book; you won't be disappointed.

I have just finished read this great book.

It's about a 12 y/o named Gabby who lost her mom when she was young. Now left with a dad and an annoying older bother, Gabby wnats to find out how she can be a woman. With the help of a woman named Cleo, who (almost) got married to Gabby's dad, Gabby is learning a little at a time.

Though a little warning to younger readers: This book cantains the word like d*** several times. The features of nude woman are also mentined in a certain point.

So I would say the average age to read this book is at least ten. (like ME!!!)

"What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows" is a really great book, it's funny, its sad, and it's got great characters. And even though this story has been told a million times, "What Every..." definately one of the better versions.

Gabby has never really had a "best friend" - she isn't exactly a loner, but she can never find that special someone that she shares a bond with. Lynette, the slightly crazy outcast tells Gabby one day "She's new and she'll cry." Gabby doesn't know what that means, but she soon finds out when Taylor comes into her 6th grade science class. Taylor and Gabby soon become great friends, spending the night at each others houses, going swimming together, and telling all their secrets. Except one. Gabby doesn't want to tell Taylor that it's her fault her mom died, or how she died. Taylor doesnt press, but she ceratinly wants to know.

This book is really good, but not anything new...the story's sweet and lighthearted. A short and easy read, I recommend it.