I never read any Beverly Cleary books so I decided to give her a try as part of the Shelf Discovery Challenge. After reading Fifteen I think it's probably best I didn't read any Beverly Cleary books because cynicism caught me pretty early in life and I think a lot of eye rolling would have happened. That's not to say that a lot of eye rolling didn't happen this time around, because it most certainly did. Jane is fifteen and she has decided that she is going to fall in love, although this doesn't seem like a possibility while she is on her way to babysit a tyrant child. Still, a girl can dream right?
Surprisingly, though, a dog food delivery boy comes to the house she is babysitting at and he is positively dreamy and wonderful and everything that a first boyfriend should be. Jane wonders when she gets home if it would be too forward of her to ask the woman she babysat for who the delivery boy was. No, that won't work, she'll just have to continue babysitting at the house and hope she runs into him again (sounds like something I would have come up with when I was fifteen). Luckily she doesn't have to worry about it because the boy calls her (this would never happen in real life). His name is Stanley Crandall and he would like to take her out. A few dates go by and Jane is Stan's girl, or at least she thinks he is until he takes another girl to the school dance!
So, the story has some misgivings, but it was also written in 1956, a year before my mom was even born. I tried to remind myself as I was reading the book. I never really felt like I knew who Jane was, but she did say some funny things every once in awhile. "Nobody wanted to be sweet and sensible, at least not a girl in high school. Jane hoped her mother would not spread it around Woodmont that she thought her daughter was sweet and sensible" (28). That was funny, and I think I could relate to that when I was about thirteen, not fifteen, but as I said 1956 so we'll move on. What really peeved me about this book though was that Stan was quite literally the only thing Jane cared about; "She did not want to be a brilliant student. She did not want to be intellectually curious. She wanted to be Stan's girl, dancing with him in the gymnasium of Woodmont High" (116). I mean, couldn't she have grown even just a little bit? I know I was kind of boy crazy when I was fifteen but I still had some other interests. Like reading and music and getting a car. I mean, it's 1956 not the beginning of the world.
So this novel earned a C.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.