What's in a Name

by Ellen Wittlinger

Overview

There's something brewing in the town of Scrub Harbor and it's not just about changing the name from Scrub Harbor to Folly Bay.

O'Neill has a secret. Adam is starting over. Christine has a crush. Gretchen has a cause. You'll get an earful getting to know them!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442466852
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	07/10/2012
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	730 KB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Ellen Wittlinger was the critically acclaimed author of the teen novels Parrotfish, Blind Faith, Sandpiper, Heart on My Sleeve, Zigzag, and Hard Love (an American Library Association Michael L. Printz Honor Book and a Lambda Literary Award winner), and its sequel Love & Lies: Marisol’s Story. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. A former children’s librarian, she passed away in November 2022 at the age of seventy-four.

Table of Contents

Contents

Georgie

O'Neill

Ricardo

Christine

Nadia

Nelson

Shaquanda

Adam

Quincy

Gretchen

Editorial Reviews

Wittlinger (Hard Love) convincingly creates 10 distinct teen voices, each of which takes a turn narrating a chapter. While the chapters offer readers only a glimpse of each character, several of them feature in the other teens' accounts, and bittersweet, even piercing musings run through many of the narratives ("It's as if my emotions are twice the size of normal people's," says one character, pained by unrequited love. "I'm the Arnold Schwarzenegger of sensitivity"). The vignettes rally around a rather tenuous theme--everyone in Scrub Harbor is caught up in a war over the town's name. The wealthy population, the "Follys," wants to change it to the more elegant Folly Bay, hoping to add value to their real estate; the poorer families, the "Scrubs," want to maintain their traditions. Yet the teens' cogent reflections fortify the volume. They reveal what runs deeper than their "Folly" or "Scrub" moniker. The dialogue can feel like forced teen-speak in spots ("You talk like a frigging moron. Get a life, why don'tcha," the football star yells at his younger brother), but readers will likely respond to the realism of both the characters and their dilemmas. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly