Stargirl is an amazing book about individuality and nonconformism. A home-schooled girl named Stargirl begins attending the public high school for her sophomore year. Stargirl is different.

She learns everybody's birthdays and on the day of, she sings them a happy birthday song -- accompanying herself on the ukulele -- in the middle of the lunch room, whether they want her to or not. She watches a young boy who lives across the street so that she can create a scrapbook for him without his knowledge. She is, in almost every way, unconventional.

The voice of the book is a young man who becomes fascinated by Stargirl and befriends her, even though many of her antics make her an outcast, otherwise. Through a series of events, she becomes wildly popular, then widely despised. For this boy, she experiments with being conventional for awhile.

The book is fascinating. It explores a lot of issues centered around social conventions and how they play in our lives for good or ill. And they take place at a stage of life when kids are most susceptible to peer pressure. Jerry Spinelli's insights are thought-provoking and engaging. In the end, the book makes you want to be a better person, perhaps in ways that aren't quite "normal." It reminds me of a talk given by Dallin H. Oaks, in which he said, "... This requires us to make some changes from our family culture, our ethnic culture, or our national culture. We must change all elements of our behavior that are in conflict with gospel commandments, covenants, and culture." The genius of it is that the book does this without being particularly preachy.

In its philosophy, and to a lesser extent in its style, the book has strong similarities to Bridge to Terabithia.