The Vine: April 1, 2011
Ask The Readers bookfest today, fittingly. Want to make sure today’s schoolchildren grow up reading beloved YA novels that they need help remembering and write in to The Vine about in 20 years’ time? Me too! Donate to a Superpage project today! And now, on with our show…
I’ve got an Ask the Readers for you. This would be a young adult novel published in the early to mid-80s. The protagonist is a girl.
Here are things I remember: a classmate that the main character didn’t particularly like accidentally shoots himself with his father’s gun and dies (the kid is possibly named George); the girl gets a babysitting job for a young, yuppie-ish couple that she admires; she gets suspended (maybe for skipping school?) and her father has her spend the day painting his shop with him; she has a sleep-over with friends where they watch Miss America.
I think she has a sister of whom she is jealous (pretty, popular, etc.) and in the end the main character ends up working on the school newspaper and finding herself. There is a sort of class element at play with the babysitting couple and the blue-collar father, where she learns not to be ashamed of the fact that her family is poor for the community. Oh! That reminds me that I think her mother was a cleaning lady for the yuppie couple; that’s how she got the babysitting job. I think the title is one of those generic-y ones, along the lines of Then Again, Maybe I Won’t or That Was Then, This Is Now.
I’m pretty sure it was written by a woman. I think the cover had the girl looking pensively out the window of a school bus. Maybe. You would think that’s a lot to go on, but I’ve Googled and Googled to no avail. “Shooting death” takes you places you don’t want to be.
Thanks,
Stanley
*****
Hi Sars!
I’m looking for a book that I read when I was in elementary school in the late ’80s, though it may have been several years old by the time I read it. I only have a few details, and I don’t remember what, exactly, happens in the book, so I would like to find out!
It was about a girl whose parents were getting divorced, and the girl and her mother move to Venice, California in her mother’s Datsun. The girl loved the Dodgers, and I think she must have originally been from Brooklyn because she and her dad don’t acknowledge that they are now a California team; she paints her bedroom Dodger Blue. That’s all I remember.
I would love the Nation’s help figuring out this book, and all searches I try to do myself bring me to YA books about Jackie Robinson!
Thanks so much!
Why do I remember the Datsun, but not the plot?
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
Stanley, I think you’re thinking of Just the Beginning by Betty Miles. I don’t remember the shooting, but I do remember the suspension and how she had to paint her dad’s store, and her sister was brilliant and wanted to be a city planner. Now I kind of want to go back and read it.
I can’t help with these two, but isn’t it interesting what details will stick with a brain for twenty years, and said details are never helpful as far as Google’s concerned? Nothing beats “chubby Manhattan death race”, but I love how a Datsun or unusual sandwiches stay lodged in the mind.
If it is Just the Beginning, I’m really curious how the author describes the main character — an e-bay listing shows a cover with a 70s-looking white girl with long blond hair, and Amazon shows a cover with an 80s-looking girl of color with teased black hair. Huh.
It is totally Just the Beginning. Thank you! I’d love to read it again, though I don’t know if I can bring myself to buy that version on Amazon.
Speaking of, @Georgia, I had the 1970s version so that’s how I pictured the girl. I think I remember her describing herself average-looking, mousy even, but that might be colored by my memory of the cover. I’m pretty sure she was white, though, since I remember her noticing in the book that all the other cleaning ladies were black.
It’s funny that a Betty Miles book would have such a wrong cover. In one of her novels–either The Trouble With Thirteen or Maudie and Me and the Dirty Book, I can’t remember which–the main character describes how she hates when book covers portray characters (especially girls) in ways that completely ignore the author’s description of those characters. Betty Miles rocks; she deserves better.
Datsun,
This is a long shot, but could your book be “With A Wave Of The Wand” by Mark Jonathan Harris? Divorce is a theme, and the mother & kids move to Venice, California. The girl meets a neighbor who is a magician — ring any bells?
@Profreader…that is totally it! I googled the name, and even found a picture of the cover I had…the little girl sitting on her bed with a Dodger t-shirt on. How did I not remember the magician neighbor?
First you guys solved my peanut butter and mayo sandwich mystery, and now this. Y’all are awesome.
Holy cow. Feeling nostalgic, I clicked the link to the Amazon page for Just the Beginning. The publisher is iUniverse. That probably means nothing to you, but iUniverse is a self-publishing company. Betty Miles had to self-publish Just the Beginning to keep it in print.
Whoever originally published her book oughta be ashamed.