Young Adult Revisited

I swear, these books are harder to find than the later SVH books! Ever since I started this blog, I've only found three (I think). I did manage to find three more in a random thrift store, so yay! I really like the Unicorn Club books though, so I'm thinking I might bite the bullet and pick them up from Amazon. Then again, maybe I'll start a want page on here and see if any of my dead readers have spare copies of any books they might sell little old me :) This book comes from the perspective of Mandy Miller, one of the sole remaining members of the Unicorn Club. She tells us that Grace skipped a grade and went to high school, Belinda transferred to another school, Kimberly moved to Georgia, and everyone else (including Janet) moved on to high school. The remaining members need to pick a new president and it isn't going so well. Jessica wants to be president just because, and Lila thinks she deserves the presidency because she's the closest f...

Mallory hates gym, and she hates it even more when SMS decides to hold co-ed gym classes. She’s sure that the boys will be horrible even though class hasn’t started. The teachers run volleyball games during class and naturally Mallory is a terrible player. She keeps doing everything wrong, she can’t hit the ball and she runs when the ball comes towards her. One of the boys even stomps on her foot and another hits her in the face with a volleyball. After a few classes, she’s had it with gym. The teacher benches her once and then Mallory decides to bench herself. The teacher gives her detention every day she won’t play, which leads to Mallory not playing every day. The school sends home a detention notice and Mallory arrives early to take it out of the mailbox. Her mom finally sits her down and talks with her about the detentions. She encourages Mallory to talk with her teacher about getting some help with the game. The teacher refuses because she doesn’t want to pull an...

Deena just got a new phone thanks to her dad who works at the phone company. Her friend Jade thinks it would be fun to make some prank calls. After calling a few people, Deena pranks this guy from school, Rob, telling him in a sexy voice that she has the hots for him. Things are about to change though because her half-brother Chuck is moving to town after getting tossed out of his last school. Deena thinks everything will be sunshine and lollipops, but it is pretty far from that. On the way home from picking Chuck up, they get into a car accident. Their dad tells them to get out of the car because people are crashing in front of and behind them. Chuck manages to save a dog from one of the wrecked cars right before it bursts into flames. He follows that up by getting into a fight with a kid at school and pulling a knife on him, which gets him suspended. Jade thinks Chuck is super hot even when he's being a dick. She comes over and convinces Deena to make some more ...

I stumbled across this earlier and had to share it. 1 Bruce 1 has some pictures up that show the covers of the new Sweet Valley Confidential sequels: The Sweet Life. Even though Francine herself said it several interviews that these were short installments, it looks like they are actually books . If not, I want to know who the heck is paying $14+ for an ebook! It also looks like the original serials will cost $1.99 per book. Francine said the ebooks would come out in May (last month for those who don't pay attention to dates), but the first book will actually come out next month. The hardcover version hits stands in October, so I'm betting that you get all six ebooks for one price. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I want to buy these. On the one hand, it's new Sweet Valley books. On the other hand, it's Sweet Valley 2.0. I wasn't a fan of Sweet Valley Confidential at all. I've read some of the older books 20 times or more, but I haven't y...

Stacey gets asked to join the Mathletes, the math club at SMS. She keeps turning them down because math people are always geeky and she is anything but geeky. She finally agrees to come to one meeting, but only because Ms. Hartley tells her that she had the highest standardized math scores in the school. She goes to the meeting and complains to herself that everyone there is a dork. Ms. Hartley buys her special sugar-free snacks and everyone is sweet to her so she feels bad. When they get into doing the actual work, she’s surprised to learn that she knows almost all the answers. She does better than anyone else at the meeting. Ed shows up unexpectedly in town, driving a brand new car. He lets it slip that he lost his job, but he’s sure that he can get another one. He makes dinner for her and her mom and spends a lot of time in Stoneybrook. He shows up at all her meets, takes her out to dinner and generally acts like the perfect dad. He even takes her back to the city to c...

Trina and her brother Dan have a ventriloquist obsessed dad. He had a dozen of the dummies stuck up in the attic, in a space he calls his own museum. He brings home a new dummy that he found in a dumpster and fixed up his head. Trina finds a slip of paper in its pocket and reads the funny words written on it. The dummy winks at her and then slaps her across the face, but no one believes her. A few days later their cousin Zane comes to spend a week. When he visited the summer before, they scared the crap out of him with the dummies, so his dad makes them promise not to do it again. Of course weird crap starts happening right off the bat. One night they find a dummy sitting at the kitchen table and on another night, the same dummy seems to follow them around the house. Zane takes a bunch of pictures and develops them in their dad’s darkroom in the basement. He gets pissed off when he finds that over half the photos are of the dummies. Trina and Dan start wondering i...

Animals are pretty much everywhere in this book from the very beginning. Mary Anne tells Dawn about Mojo and James, two gorillas on loan from the San Diego Zoo. Then they go to the movies and see signs about a store that bought an elephant from a circus and use it as a display. Little Babar has a collection and donations go towards saving him. They go to school and see a giant cardboard box outside and all the science teachers wearing trench coats and sunglasses. The classes all meet in the auditorium and they bring out the giant box. The teachers open their jackets and reveal shirts with the slogan of the Bedford Zoo on the front. Then they learn that they are all getting divided into groups and each group must study animal behavior. Buses will take kids to the zoo. Mary Anne gets stuck with Alan, while Dawn, Claudia and Logan end up in another group. Kristy is most pissed because she’s in a group with Stacey. This book comes during the timeframe where Stacey qu...