How One Gir Saw EverythingFor: YA
Published: 2006
182 pgs.
Rating: 3.5/Fun
Finished: Oct. 8, 2008
This is the third E. Lockhart novel I've read - all for the TARC YA Reading Group. Lockhart's audience is the female late middle-school/early high-schooler who likes romance novels. I recommended this book to an 8th grader who as been emrboiled in the Clique series (gag), and she liked it a lot. It's led her to others of this genre that are SO much better than the Cliques.
Gretchen Yee, a 16-year-old half-Jewish, Half-Chinese comic book artist, attends the Manhattan School for the Arts, where no one want to be normal or "average". This is tough for her, because that's exactly how she considers herself. Nonetheless, she dies her hair bright red in an attempt to fit in. She has a best friend, Katya, but holds herself off from many of the other students. Literature and Drawing are the two subjects she's having trouble with - Drawing because her art teacher is trying to get her to abandon the comic book style that she loves, and literature because....well, she really doesn't care about literature. The sophomore class is currently studying Kafka's Metamporhasis, and she could care less. She has a huge crush on Titus, a classmate that also appears to be a very nice young man, popular with the Art Rats (the sophomore drawing program), but laments that she doesn't understand boys at all.
One weekend she is magically changed into a fly in the boy's locker room, where she resides for a week, not understanding how she got there or if she'll ever be able to return to her own life. What she observes for this week will change her life, change her confidence in herself, and help her understand boys a whole lot more.
It's a great premise, and I like the way bullying and homophobia are handled. It's an entertaining story, seemingly lighthearted but with a couple of pretty powerful messages included.
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