Do You Call That a Dream Date? - Hardcover

Grade 7-9 In this fast-paced, often comic tribute to teen angst, Anderson provides a sure page-turner with a digestible dose of moralizing. To high-school freshman Jenny Beaumont, being unexceptional and ordinary is a curse. Her beautiful, intellectual college-age sister has her pegged for an idiot. Boys don't notice her, and the popular set doesn't know that she's alive. Thus, winning the Dream Date of a lifetime with super rock star Matt Gates is a necessity. Being lousy in English and hungry for sisterly revenge, Jenny copies one of her sister's papers to win the essay contest which entitles her to the Dream Date. When her heavenly date becomes history, she is exposed as a cheat to the school newspaper by her own sister. Her public humiliation in an all-school assembly is partially blunted by her rediscovery of a long-time friend who promises to be a ``best'' friend as well as a dream date. Anderson has a good ear for dialogue, and she faithfully and believably records a New York City single-parent family. The sibling rivalry is bitter, unceasing, and realistic. Steve Matthews, Currier Library, Foxcroft School, Middleburg, Va.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Readers are sure to enjoy narrator Jenny's wisecracks while sympathizing with the messes she gets herself into. Jenny, a ninth-grade New Yorker, is deliriously happy when she learns that, as a publicity campaign, a student from her school is to have a "dream date" with Matt Gates, lead singer of Country of the Blind. But when it's announced that the lucky girl will be the author of the best essay about the band, Jenny knows she hasn't a chanceshe's flunking English. Older sister Carolyn, who already makes Jenny's life miserable, makes her the subject of a psychology paper on subnormal adolescents. Jenny reads it; to get back at Carolyn, Jenny steals her sister's paper on the Beatles and uses it as her essay in the contest. She wins the date, and it's everything she wished for, but the truth of her deception eventually gets out. Convinced that she'll never have another friend again, she's surprised when her childhood pal Albert invites her home for dinner. And Jenny learns that a real date can be much more satisfying than a dream one. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.