Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli
The new girl at Mica Area High School could not possibly be real. She claimed her name was Stargirl Caraway. Home-schooled previously, she carried a ukulele at lunch and serenaded total strangers. She wrote a song about isosceles triangles and sang it to her geometry class. She cheered for both teams at games and carried her pet rat Cinnamon in her pocket. She dressed oddly, danced in the rain, left candy hearts on the desk of classmates.
A nonconformist, Stargirl attracted attention and changed people’s outlook in unexpected ways Then suddenly, without explanation, she disappeared, taking her magic with her. Her boyfriend Leo wonders if she were real, as he tells of Stargirl’s impact on the school and the town.
Love, Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli
Stargirl, in “the world’s longest letter,” writes to Leo about the next year, after she moved so suddenly to Minnesota from the Southwest. Her happy wagon, usually filled with twenty pebbles, dwindles to almost none. Life is sad for Stargirl; she wonders if she will ever see Leo again. But, being Stargirl, she notices people sadder than she, and works her magic of care and concern. She befriends an older woman who has not left her house in more than nine years, and an angry little girl who hates everyone. She notices an old man who goes daily to the cemetery, to talk to his wife now dead four years, and brings him donuts. She celebrates the winter solstice and reveals sunlight to the entire town.. Stargirl brings her magic to another area as she deals with her loneliness in this new book by Jerry Spinell. This sequel is too good to miss.
Posted by Mrs. Stone, Nov. 2007
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