All-American Girl
What’s on my mp3 player? All-American Girl, by Meg Cabot.
To me, Meg Cabot is like Laurie Halse Anderson. Both can take me Over the Top because they create characters that are painfully and delightfully realistic even if the situations are not.
In All-American-Girl, Samantha Madison saves the President of the United States from an assassin. Yep. And I willingly went with it. That’s not the kind of “unbelievable” situation that bothers me, though. It’s a very fine line. Once you’ve swallowed that hunk of silliness (something I indulge in frequently), the story plays out in a natural, believable, and entertaining Cabot-y way.
There are two annoying sisters, an unrequited crush on the older sister’s boyfriend, alienation from the In crowd, sudden and unwanted fame and popularity, some tough lessons on life and art, a fair share of humiliation, some soul-searching and courage-finding, and–of course–a cute boy as the payoff that makes it all worthwhile. Woe to young girls who don’t have the cute-boy payoff.
NaNo is severely cutting into my reading time, but I’m keeping pace with audio books because they are conducive to multi-tasking. A gal’s got to get to the mailbox, you know.
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kim Baise Wrote,
Yes! these days it’s all about Multitasking!
Sounds like an unlikely drama…but then again, everything’s possible, right?
Link | November 17th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Jen Wrote,
Hmm. Kim’s “everything’s possible” comment has put a new thought–question, really–in my head. It’s one I won’t ever have an answer to, but I wonder if I was less skeptical about the “everything’s possible” concept when I was of the YA age. Had I been a reader, would I have demanded the same level of believability I do now, or would I have more readily accepted things that push me over the edge these days?
I wonder…
Link | November 17th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Becca Wrote,
Ooh, very good question. It’s true, you will never know for sure, but I suspect that you would have been more accepting. (I still find it hard to believe you ever weren’t a reader. You’ve sure made up for lost time.) I tend to believe that even level-headed and bookish teenagers (yes, guilty) are willing to believe and accept more than adults can, or even want to.
Link | November 17th, 2008 at 8:57 pm