My Almost Epic Summer

by Adele Griffin

Overview

Irene’s got big dreams—someday she’s going to own an exclusive salon in L.A. It’s a good thing she has dreams, since her reality is harsh.  She’s just been fired from her mom’s beauty salon for her tear-jerking shampooing technique, and is forced to take the only other job she can find—babysitting.  Now she’s stuck at the beach entertaining kids while everyone else is having a glamorous summer.  Will she ever get a life? Then Irene meets Starla, a mind-bogglingly beautiful lifeguard, whose diva attitude, dangerous obsessions, male admirers, and fiery blog hold enough real-life drama and romance to fill a book.  Suddenly Irene finds that the countdown to real life is over and her fate is in her own hands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101098530
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	05/01/2008
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	274 KB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Adele Griffin is the acclaimed author of many books for young readers, including Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be, both National Book Award finalists. She is also the author of All You Never Wanted, Tighter, Picture the Dead, The Julian Game, and the Witch Twins and Vampire Island middle-grade series. Adele lives with her husband and children in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

Griffin (Sons of Liberty) creates a lighthearted rendering of teenage ennui in this novel introducing Irene, a 14-year-old who is stuck at home in New Jersey while her best friend "spends a glorious, glamorous summer" at tennis camp in Vermont. Irene is passionate about two things: reading books and sketching hairdos of her favorite literary heroines. She dreams of owning her own beauty salon some day, but for the time being, she must tolerate a much less exciting career, baby-sitting the two Prior children five days a week. Just as she's resigned herself to spending hot, miserable days at the beach with her two young wards, Irene meets Starla, a stunningly beautiful but narcissistic lifeguard. The plot thickens when a mutual attraction blossoms between Starla's ex-boyfriend and Irene. Through a first-person narrative full of irony, the author conveys her heroine's alternating envy of and fascination for Starla as well as Irene's gradual realization that she may, after all, be a more interesting person than a bronzed-to-perfection diva. E-mails from Irene's friend at camp and an endearing nun, who was Irene's former English teacher, add an extra dimension to the novel, which underscores such morals as "You can't judge a book by its cover" and "Beauty is only skin deep." Ages 11-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7-10-Avid reader Irene, 14, keeps a sketchbook of famous literary hairdos for her future salon, Heroine Hairstyles, to be located in L.A., about as far from New Jersey as she can get. Things go awry when she's let go three weeks into her summer job at her mother's beauty shop. Forced to take unglamorous work babysitting two fidgety kids, the teen ignores her friends' e-mails (they're on interesting vacations), is impatient with her young charges, and generally feels sorry for herself. At Larkin's Pond, she meets gorgeous lifeguard Starla Malloy and becomes fascinated by her looks and cutting attitude. Irene tries to cultivate a friendship with the girl and suddenly life goes from dreary to exciting. Starla scoffs at Irene's literary interests but uses a blog to write bad poetry to "D," the boyfriend who dumped her, and to make veiled (and atrociously misspelled) digs at Irene. Summer gets more complicated when the latest of Irene's mother's volatile, drifter boyfriends takes off and the teen is left trying to console the heartbroken woman. As she gets in deeper with Starla, who is obsessing over her ex-boyfriend's rejection, Irene finds herself attracted to the young man who spurned the lovely but spiteful lifeguard. Sometimes the protagonist acts like a typical teen and at others she seems too wise and well read for her age, but Griffin has created vivid scenes, believable dilemmas, and satisfyingly human characters in this novel of self-discovery.-Roxanne Myers Spencer, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

The clear, but occasionally unrealistic teenage voice of Irene Morse, a spunky, intelligent and sometimes melodramatic heroine, recounts the summer leading into her freshman year. Just fired from her mother's salon, Irene resigns herself to a less than epic summer, until she meets Starla, the lifeguard at the local lake, who radiates a perfection that enchants Irene. Slowly, however, Irene uncovers Starla's snarly side and realizes that she's much better off without her. Woven throughout are heavy literary references, which reinforce Irene's bookish character, but that seem beyond her age group or at least above potential readers (Lolita;A Confederacy of Dunces). However, in a failed attempt to counterbalance this maturity, there are several gossipy e-mail correspondences to her best friends that are brimming with overpoweringly cutesy nicknames and way too many exclamation points!!! These e-mails throw Irene's character off balance and disrupt the plot's otherwise smooth and believable flow. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews

While Irene may not consider her summer to be epic, it is certainly a summer of personal milestones and self-discovery. At first, Irene is a teenager who feels tremendously sorry for herself at being forced into babysitting for two kids all summer. Jessica Almasy delivers all of Irene’s personal outrage at this situation. As the summer progresses, Irene begins to grow up. Her newfound maturity is reflected in Almasy's voice; as Irene is transformed into a sympathetic character, the change is wholly believable. Almasy's portrayals of the other characters are also credible—from ultra-cool love interest Drew Fuller to the glamorous Starla, who thinks herself a poet. While the story is not complex, Almasy brings a universally human aspect to her narration. M.R.P. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

AUG/SEP 07 - AudioFile