Mike’s Reviews > Gracie's Girl > Status Update

I will no longer accept anyone talking about how much teenagers are jerks. Eleven and twelve year olds are so much worse.

Bess and Ethan's characterization are easily the best thing about this novel. Wittlinger just doesn't have a great story for them. I kind of wish the charity aspects were cut out, and it was just about them being in middle school and their school play.

I gotta say, this isn't one of Wittlinger's better novels. I'm finding that I don't like her earlier novels as much as her later ones, and this is no exception. I like Bess as a character, but the story is just too simple and didactic.

My biggest worry is that this novel is going to be too didactic to be effective. So far, that definitely seems to be the case, but maybe Wittlinger can turn it around.

Wittlinger is doing a very good job of capturing how terrible sixth graders are. If this were set in a high school, I'd call it exaggerated, but... nope, this is pretty much exactly what sixth graders are like.

This is gonna be really didactic, isn't it? This Means War got a lot of criticisms for that, but I always thought the book did an okay job of showing someone confused by questions with no real answers. Here... this just looks like a setup for a message about how good charity is.

Don't disappoint me, Wittlinger! Lately, it seems like most of my favorite authors have been disappointing me - I don't want to add you to that list.