Reprints Online

One thing I really enjoy doing is rereading kids books. I checked out <u>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory</u> and zoomed through it in about two hours. I have reread many other classics and enjoyed them. I think my next big kids read will be the infamous <u>Harriet the Spy</u> which I loved and totally identified with as a child.

One of the greatest regrets of my life (in terms of small scale regrets, anyway) is that I sold off my Sweet Valley High books. Now, granted, SVH isn't all that 'classic', but I so loved the storyline and always identified with Elizabeth. I used to own every book up past a hundred, and all of the special editions (summer, winter, etc) they had out. It took me years to collect. Now I have about three of them at home. I have been checking used bookstores but apparently they aren't that popular anymore. And no wonder. I don't think Jessica, the 'wild' twin, ever got beyond some passionate kissing. Which is why I'd love to have them around for my daughter when she gets older. So if you want to just box up all you have and send them to me...

But one of the biggest shocks I had in kids books came this weekend. While scouring paperbacks at the library, I came across a Judy Blume book for grownups, <u<Summer Sisters</u>. Now, Judy Blume was a crazy favorite of mine; I read pretty much everything she wrote. So of course I had to check out this novel. I had grown up; time to see if Judy did.

One of the things I enjoyed as a kid was Blume's realism and frankness. Although Ramona Quimby (age 8) was cute and adorable, she wasn't exactly realistic. Although Matilda was brilliant and could read by age 2 and move things with her mind...well, let's just say I identified with her except for that whole reading by age 2 and moving things with her mind. But Blume's characters were real kids with real problems.

The same is true of what I read in <u>Summer Sisters</u> I suppose. We have two girls experimenting with sex, naturally curious, and putting together one of those 'odd' relationships. However, in searching for realism, I felt Blume overdoes it. Sure, teenagers are sex crazed, but oh my goodness, I didn't know you could pack that much sex into so few pages. The novel was just too much for me, and so, although the storyline was interesting, I finally gave up and closed the pages for good when the girls started discussing their experiments with oral sex.

The characters were realistic and credible, but I guess just too nitty gritty for me. I also had a problem with the seven or eight point-of-views tried throughout the book, while the majority was told in the first person. I seem to be hitting a lot of that lately, and it has been driving me nuts. If nothing else, it breaks the flow of the story.

So I think I'm going to keep my mind uncluttered. I'll head back to one of my childhood favorites by Blume, <u>Blubber</u> and avoid the remainder of her adult novels. She's a great writer, but I guess I have another 10 or 20 years to go before I'm that grown up.

About the Author

Nola Redd is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/which is a site for Poetry. To see more of her book reviews, for both fiction and nonfiction, visit her Biblio-file.