A lovely, realistic story about friendship and growing up. While I wasn't always convinced that the 1970s setting was necessary, perhaps it enabled the story to exist in a world where there's a little more wild area for these wild girls to wander. They're the kind of girls I don't see enough of in realistic fiction (is it just me, or do they tend to live more in fantasy stories?) where they enjoy the outdoors and live vividly in their imaginations. The fact that they both love to write, and that this development as writers is key to the story, is an added bonus. I can see this appealing immensely to girls who want realistic stories with a bit more substance, but which are still fairly innocent at heart. There are some family issues, but the girls don't obsess about boys or appearance or growing up too fast.