September Girls by Bennett Madison

[Whitney]

With five starred reviews, does September Girls have what it takes to earn a Printz win or honor?

[Brandi]

I just finished this book yesterday and I still can't wrap my head around what it was all about. Madison is very careful to never label the Girls, allowing the reader to create whatever reality they wish. I enjoyed the alternating perspectives of the story, especially the Girls' third person perspective.

I don't know if it is good enough to win a Printz or an honor. It's interesting and different, but I wasn't bowled over by the writing or the story.

[Maureen]

Not my favorite book for several reasons, but still hits on several key points of Printz criteria. The characters have a definite development, although it takes a really, really long time for this to come to fruition. Madison really has some excellent writing in his descriptions of the setting, which plays such a prominent part in the book. His descriptions of the beach evoked such memories from vacations at the shore.

Thematically, it asks some deep questions about where we get our identity from, is it something you're born with, do others influence it, can it be crafted? In the end, I felt like a case could be made for any of those possibilities, or at least a combination of them.

In much of what I've read from others on this book, misogyny and sexism have come up, but I didn't really have an issue with that. Both Sam and "The Girls" develop throughout the story to neutralize that issue. At the end of the book, Sam has a conversation with a friend from home that shows how different the is at the end of vacation from the boy who set out at the beginning of the summer.

The problem I had with the book is that all that great writing overshadowed itself. Sam's stay at the beach seemed interminable, which I think was supposed to be the point, but it made for some slow reading. At some parts of the book, it felt more like a slog. The answers to the mysteries of the book are imparted very deliberately, which again made for slow reading. I kept feeling like I was missing something, and that was the only thing that compelled me to continue reading.

I have this book in my collection, but I'm not sure if I can think of a student to recommend this one too, and not sure if it is deserving of a spot in January.