Customer Reviews

Worst Enemies/Best Friends

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a mom of an avid reader, aged 9. I am always concerned that, because she can read well, she will choose books that may be challenging in length and context but may be too advanced for her socially and emotionally. I just finished this, book 1 of the series, and am happy to say that this looks like a series I can get behind 100%. The series revolves around the friendship and loyalty of a group of diverse middle school girls who create a club in an attic. In book 1, the author tackles the subjects that kids at this age deal with (diverse backgrounds and interests, snobs, crushes, learning diabilities - one girl has a laptop not because she's a rich snob but because she has a learning disability)in a language they understand...hip slang, cyberspeak, etc. The values of loyalty, honesty, civic duty and friendship are paramount in this story. Moms and Dads, fret not. Only positive messages found in this book. I look forward to my daughter reading these and getting hooked on a series based on strong girls and their friendship.

Clearly, I'm not the target market for this book. :) However, I am an eclectic reader, and I got this one for free, so I thought I'd try it.

I was pleasantly surprised. It was well-written, with fully-realized characters. One of the characters in particular reminded me of a friend of my child's.

The story concerns Charlotte, a new kid in school. Charlotte has lived in different places around the world, and always has a disaster on her first day. She and her Dad are living back in America, and this is not just any first day, but the first day of Junior High...a challenge for anyone, whether you have a "first day curse" or not.

The book tells the story from different perspectives, although each chapter moves the story forward. We are told at the beginning of the chapter who is speaking, but the main friends are distinctly drawn, so you could figure it out quickly even without that.

There is a bit of a mystery, lunch room embarassments, building friendships, and talk about boys and girls...but nothing that would be inappropriate.

I'd recommend it, especially for girls who are going to be interested in reading about Junior High (even if they are a bit younger than that themselves).

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While clearly adapted from a paper edition (there is a bookplate, even though you can't really interact with it), it has been well-designed for reading on the Kindle. It does have chapter marks, which means you can "flick right" on a Kindle 2 or Kindle DX and jump to the next chapter. It has an interactive Table of Contents. Other features include a Who's Who, trivia, and a vocabulary section (supposed written by the main character, and called a "Word Nerd Dictionary").

I bought this book for my daughter for many reasons; one was in the first line that "Stars and books have been my best friends. My books go wherever we move. And the stars, they are always there when we get there".

I could see my 12 year old daughter and her friends in the lives of the characters in many ways however fictional they were. Back to the book, there are four friends Maeve (parents own a movie house so watches free movies), Katani (has three sisters and lives with parents and her grandmother is school principal), Charlotte (the girl I told you about above who has moved around a lot, lives with her Dad her mum is dead) and Avery (adopted from Korea. Said her most embarrassing moment is when asked where babies come from and said from aeroplanes but that is what she had always known because she had a video given to her about the day her parents got her and there was this woman coming out of an aeroplane with many babies).

The book is both serious yet funny and I will highlight a little section. Maeve is at the stage where she thinks boys are so cool (too many movies) and the rest believe they are buddies, romance is still too foreign to them. So Maeve wants to go out with Nick who is a classmate and his parent's own the local bakery where he helps out after school, here is her conversation with Charlotte (edited a little):

M: Tons of girls want to go out with Nick

C: They do? Why?

M: Cause he's..I don't know..really cute..I don't know

C: So can you just ask him to do something?

M: Of course not! Are you crazy? Would Scarlett Ohara (in 'Gone with the Wind') do that? It's all about strategy. You've got to..drop hints first. Let him know by accident that you like him. Tell his friends or you IM someone and they IM someone else and he finds out about it. You just can't ask someone out. Never!

So of course she goes about her strategy and wants to get him to go watch 'Going with the Wind' at the movie house coz it is SO ROMANTIC. Here is her 'Romantic Evening Recipe Card':

Ingredients:

1 Romantic Boy (if too hard to find, substitute 1 unsuspecting boy)

1 Romantic girl

I frozen hot chocolate, Maeve style

2 straws

2 free movie tickets (easier if you don't mention it's a romantic movie)

Directions (read the book and have a laugh!!!)

In a nutshell, she convinces Nick to go to the movies and she has free tickets for `Gone with the Wind' which he doesn't know. They arrive at the movie house and he notices 'Spiderman' is on the marquee so gets excited thinking that is what she was talking about and he has seen it five times and it is really the greatest. "This is not going well" Maeve thinks. So she convinces him that it would be pointless to watch it a sixth time so why don't they watch 'Gone with the Wind' instead and Nick wonders isn't that kind of old and kind of long. So she says since he is the guest they can watch 'Gone with the Wind' but if he gets bored they can move across to 'Spiderman'. When Scarlett and Rhett are about to kiss, Nick wondered what was going on in the movie and Atlanta started burning, he stood up and declared that they go watch Spiderman! In Maeve's words "It was absolutely the most depressing moment of my life. That's when it hit me. True romance is wasted on seventh-grade boys".

On a more serious note, I also love the teaching style of their class teacher and there is a lot to learn on how she resolves issues. Read the book!

my mom bought me 3 of these books cuase she read about them and then read the amazon customer reviews. i just read the reviews here and i cant beleive my mom thought they were from real girls. real girls dont talk like that.grown ups like the writer's mom or friends or someone talk like that. they are totally fake. first of all the beacon street girls are not that interesting and their problems are like out of a newspaper. i dont think these are well written or interesting and i showed them to my friends. we like series of unfortuante events much better or harry potter or litle house on the prairie or books by corneila funke. theres a new book out my mom bought me that is really good called the penderwicks. that one is really good. get that instead.

I downloaded this book for free on my Kindle. It's written for young teens, but it's very well written and unlike a lot of books of that genre, it doesn't patronize the reader. Characters that you will like, and enough intrigue that will keep you interested.

I would recommend this book for any age from 12 on up.

My name is Cecelie and I fell in love with this book the first time I read it. These books are great for teens like me or anymore in general. Charlotte is a girl who moves from Paris to a new school in Boston. She used to live in Paris. She is afraid of being embarrassed on the first day of school.
Although Charlotte thinks she won't make friends, she makes friends with her enemies. I also love this book because many kids can relate to this book (even me). I relate to this book because I was the new kid once and I thought I would not make any friends. Charlotte is a lot like me. I can relate a little bit to each character. I can relate to Avery because I love basketball. I can relate to Maeve because I love movies. Katani loves fashion and so do I.
I love to read just like Charlotte. I like reading this book because I love the characters in this book because they are like me. I also like how Charlotte and her friends always stick up for each other. I like how they have a "place away from school." Charlotte and her friends are always a team!
This book shows you all of the great things about having a strong friendship. I would really recommend this book to anyone. I love this book!

This is the first book in the "Beacon Street Girls" series. Annie Bryant takes on the hardy task of reaching out to a new generation of "tweens" and teens, creating a fun story that also attempts to connect with the adolescent girl psyche. A story about being "the new girl" in a new school is an old cliche standby, but Bryant gives it new life.

Charlotte, Katani, Maeve and Avery take turns telling their stories, each having their own chapters in a diary-style first-person narrative. Aside from "regular" writing, included in their detailed accounts of their experiences are cutesy little notes to each other, cyber chat transcripts, and rules to live by. This is a book for children living in the digital age! Overall, the dialogue is funny, yet the scenarios are a tad formulaic. Are most teens as superficial as this book makes it seem? Very much in the spirit of Ann M. Martin's The Baby-Sitters Club, this new series also focuses on the strength of friendship between a group of girls, but it lacks the emphasis on jobs and responsibility that BSC dealt with heavily. The girls in Beacon Street live a life of leisure and frivolity. What kind of bigger message does this send to the real girls who read this type of book? Although admittedly Bryant endeavors to fashion a new type of series, one cannot help but question if there is any substance beneath all the style. Still, the book is an amusing read, produces momentum, and keeps up the energy throughout; this is quite possibly the most "hyper" book on the market for teens today.

This is the first installment in the Beacon Street Girls series. And, by far my favorite book of them all. Probably because this story is being told from the views of the original four BSGs (Beacon Street Girls). It's a fun read for girls my age (11). But you have to admit, the whole "As soon as they meet, they despise each other and in the end are friends" thing gets really old and overrated. I understand the reason they didn't like each other was first impressions, but still, "Never assume", that's my motto. It may surprise people but Annie Bryant, is not just one person writing these funny but somewhat serious books, but a whole team writing together. And from reading these books I realized that I have a bit of all the BSG in me. I love creativity like Isabel, I can imitate voices like Maeve, I love writing and reading like Charlotte, I love animals like Avery, and I love fashion like Katani. I really enjoy the message of being yourself. So really, there's something for everyone in these delightful books. The summary of the book is basically Charlotte is new and she doesn't hit it off very well with the other girls when they should be trying to be working together as they are working on an assignment. It's a very funny read and I definitely reccomend it!

I love the Beacon Street Girls series because the girls seem so real. So many people are complaining that the plot isn't interesting enough, but let's face it--the issues that the BSG face are much more likely to come up in your life than things like attending a wizarding school and have a dark lord on your tail or having a ghost following you around. Not that books like Harry Potter aren't great, but they're not meant to be realistic. BSG is.

One thing that I've noticed (I have no idea if this has bothered anyone else, I have weird pet peeves) is that the characters don't use contractions very often. They'll say, "They are rather nice," or "That is quite a nice coat," etc. It doesn't take away from the greatness of the story, but that's really the only unrealistic thing about the dialogue to me.

Okay, my raving is complete.

Anyhow, Beacon Street Girls is a great series that will leave you wanting another fantabulous (:-D) book!

(And contrary to one belief in this thread of reviews, I am a kid reviewer.)

I thought this was a really good book. It was very down-to earth, so it needed a little more action. This book had the charectres going through some of the same things in my life, like problems with mean girls, gossip,and being a new kid.