A Field Guide to High School
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Andie has just finished eighth grade and will be starting high school in the fall. The good news: Her super-popular valedictorian big sister, Claire, is graduating and won't be there to put Andie in the shadows. The bad news: Her super-popular valedictorian big sister, Claire, is graduating and won't be there to help her. But Claire hasn't forgotten Andie.
For her little sister, Claire has put together a guide that covers everything a freshman needs to know but didn't even think to ask. Andie reads every word and even shares it with her best friend, Bess.
But sometimes they wonder if Harvard-bound Claire got everything right! In this hilarious and honest look at one girl's heroic attempt to conquer high school, readers will get all the benefit of Claire's wisdom about making those four years more than bearable—and absolutely memorable. Fortunately, high school happens only once in a lifetime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This slender book-within-a-book, while witty, reads more like background for a novel than a full-fledged work in itself. Claire, who has just left for Yale, has penned little sister Andie a guidebook to the private high school where Claire reigned supreme and where Andie is poised to enter as a freshman. With her bestie Bess (who's about to enter a Catholic school), Andie and readers absorb Claire's words of wisdom, which have been set into the pages of an old field guide to "poisonous plants" and "venomous animals." This wry touch closely resembles the use of zoology in Mean Girls, a movie quoted here along with other pop culture references. Kids familiar with those references will already know Walsh's (Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything) territory and players (goths, skaters, Muffys, Hiltons). Some of Claire's counsel might be shrewd but it's hard to implement (she tells her sister to be sick on the day of the ninth-grade class trip, since "nothing good comes of it"); much is obvious (while giving students distinct labels, she notes that "everyone... is insecure. Everyone. Insecure. Equally"). The narrative element, exploring the bond between the sisters, is too thin to compensate for the lack of a plot. Ages 12-up.
