Worst Enemies/Best Friends

This is a series of books based on the adventures of some girls in junior high. (The viewpoint also depends on which girl is talking during the chapter, the first two chapters being from Charlotte's point of view). The first girl we are introduced to is Charlotte who has lived in Africa, Australia, Paris and who is now living in America. She's rather clumsy and quite nervous about starting at a new school. Her father is a writer and teacher. The house they are now living in has a tower she can't get into.

It starts off quite humorously with her list of ten things not to do on the first day in school. The good news is that she didn't go any of those; the bad news is she did something far worse, tangling a tablecloth in the zipper of her pants, standing up and thereby dumping everything on the table at the other people who were sitting there. That is so not a way to win friends and influence people.(Although you can easily picture the incident in your mind and it is incredibly funny.)

We're next introduced to Maeve, who's part Irish. She loves movies and wants to be an actress. She also has dyslexia. Katani is the next one introduced. She wants to be a fashion designer (and she's black). Avery (adopted from South Korea) is up next. She loves animals and sports.

As a result of the tablecloth incident Charlotte gets to meet the school's principal, Mrs. Fields (who seems to be an incredibly nice person.) She invites Charlotte to help her granddaughters and her bake some apple crisp, which is a potentially very good thing.

(The third chapter is from Katani's point of view.) She has an 18 year old sister, Candice; a 16 year old sister, Patrice, and a 14 year old sister, Kelly, who is autistic. (Katani is 12.) Mrs. Fields has gotten it into her head that Charlotte will be Katani's (and others) new best friend, something which Katani rather strongly objects to, to say the least.

The next two chapters are from Charlotte's point of view. Chapter 6 is from Avery's point of view. She's writing impressions of some of the others; she considers Maeve too much of a “girly-girl.” She thinks Charlotte is “major entertainment.” She doesn't have much of an opinion one way or the other about Katani yet. There's also some entries from the journals of the other girls.

Chapter 7 is Katani's. She asks the teacher to change her lunch group (with includes the other girls), but the teacher says to wait another day. Chapter 8 is Charlotte's. (And so it goes; I won't list each chapter's writer from here on.)

Maeve also goes to a Hebrew school. She is fixated on a boy named Nick. She tries to get his attention, but he's more interested in Charlotte than in her. Charlotte gets home from school. No one should be in the house but she says she's home anyhow and thinks she hears someone, but there's no one there as far as she can tell.

Katani comes up with an idea about having a sleepover and then stopping the use of assigned seating in lunch. The sleepover is going to be at Charlotte's. They live on the second floor of a house and no one ever sees the person who owns the house and lives on the first floor.

The first part of the sleepover goes very, very badly as they all get into major arguments, but then things seem to settle down into a nice, comfortable pillow fight.

Unfortunately, very early in the morning a mouse makes its debut among the girls and the great mouse-hunt is on. During the mouse hunt they discover the entrance into the tower. At the top of the tower they find an observatory.

In one of the class assignments Avery brings up a very good point about racism indications on standardized tests. Charlotte and Maeve also come up with good suggestions for the seventh grade. (It's obvious that the book will not be just humor but will have some good, practical things in it also.)

In the tower the girls discover a hidden envelopment with a parchment and a key in it. Charlotte has a problem, though, in that she hasn't told the girls that she and her father only rent the second floor of the house; the girls think the entire house is hers.

Charlotte's father finds about a dog she's taking care of and the entrance to the tower. He tells her she has to get everything out of the tower and the dog has to be taken to the dog shelter. She emails an explanation to the other girls. At school Charlotte breaks down in tears and talks to the principal who shows up later at her house.

The principal and the landlady are best friends, but the landlady has become sort of a recluse. She lets Charlotte keep the dog and the girls to use the tower. The woman is an amateur astronomer and the telescope is hers.

In the end two very old friends are brought together and everything returns to normal; actually, even better than normal.

This is a delightful book to read; lots of humor and well-done characters make it a pleasure to read. There's no great discussions of world problems, no bodies falling out of windows, no moral pronouncements or political diatribes; it's just a fun read. A really fun read.


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