Surfer Girl

by Penelope Dyan

Summer wants to figure out what the legacy of her life will be. Summer's mother is a writer and is leaving behind her writing for Summer, because this is her legacy for her; and Summer wants a legacy of her own because she is growing up now. Summer's mom thinks Summer should take more time to just be a kid and fears Summer is a bit too serious about everything. Meet Summer's friends and find out what spectacular things Summer accomplishes and does with her summertime, and find out how Summer discovers what her legacy for the future will be. 'Surfer Girl' was the winner of best teenage book at both the 2008 New York Book Festival and the 2008 Hollywood Book Festival and is recognized by the Girls Voices In Literature Database, Miami University, Florida. This book is also listed as number 5 in the top 10 early teen reader list (by Pukeke) in Australia.

Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a great book with a real family dynamic. I think theis book is well written, properly age appropriate and has a a great message. I'm tired of dark, unreal books about vampires and witches. This book is great and leaves you wanting to read more about this girl named Summer. This is a great pece of fiction, and promotes family values, religious values, ecological values--let's say it is just plain value oriented and the reading is great! I'm glad it's a series.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, where should I begin? Obviously, this is a self published book, but self published should not mean unedited or not proofread. There are so many typos, errors and other misspellings that it is frightening! Not to mention the pathetic sentence construction and grammatical issues. The writing level is somewhere between a second and fourth grade level. It's embarrassing that an adult wrote this poorly and thought she should publish her work.

Now, that being said, this is barely a story...it's a bunch of disjointed chapters with characters that pop in briefly who often have no purpose in the book...the narrator (clearly the author) is a schizophrenic woman with a bloated sense of self importance...she has an unhealthy obsession with her youngest daughter and complete resentment for her oldest two daughters. The narrator shows her nastiness and pretention often throughout what is little more than a nasty diary obviously meant for the eyes of people she knows. I feel sorry for the youngest child who is obviously being held up to impossibly high standards that no normal teen would want to emulate. Also, the narrator constantly rips on Summer's ex-boyfriend repeating over and over that the teen had "man boobs".... unlikely for a child that age and a really sad attempt at publicly humiliating the boy who dared to break up with her daughter. All in all, the author shows herself to be small minded and generally unintelligent. I left this book feeling like I had read the diary of a mentally ill person with a low IQ.