Just the Two of Us - Hardcover

Greenberg, Jan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374361983 ISBN 13: 9780374361983

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1988

Synopsis

Not wanting to move from her Manhattan home, Holly persuades her mother to establish herself in their new Des Moines home while Holly spends the summer with the eccentric Applebaum family

About this title

From School Library Journal

Gr 6-8 While they're laughing at the funny incidents in Holly's life, readers will certainly empathize with the heroine, whose mother wants to take her from New York City and the life she's always known to the hinterlands: Des Moines, Iowa. Never having been assertive, Holly strives to find a way to remain by herself in the city, but it's her friend Max Applebaum, always scheming, who arranges for his glamorous parents to keep Holly with them for the summer. The kids cook up a party service, Parties with Pizzazz, and the experiences that they have are very funnyand very believable. But as she observes that lives in other people's homes aren't always what they appear, and that there's no such thing as the perfect situation or perfect parents, Holly longs for her mother and regrets her own lack of loyalty to her. She even looks forward to resuming relations with the father from whom she's been alienated since her parents' divorce three years ago. While entertaining reading, this book is strong on values that should appeal to both kids and adults. Some characters are a little too zany to be believable, but that adds to the enjoyment. Susan F. Marcus, Pollard Middle Sch . , Needham, Mass.

Copyright 1988 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Exercises of the Heart writes again of a communication breakdown between mother and daughter, but this time the disagreement leads to separation. Until Holly's mother springs her plan to move them to Des Moines, the two of them had shared a studio apartment in Manhattan. Holly balks at the move, and finally persuades her mother to let her spend the summer with her best friend Max's family, in a four-story brownstone. But the summer is not what Holly had planned. The business that she and Max were to have launched is not as successful as she had hoped, and she misses her mother, who seems to be settling into Iowa so well that she has found time to make a male friend. And Max's family, seemingly so glamorous to Holly, show themselves to be so busy and self-involved that she feels constantly alone. The many disparate elements of this volume are never truly pulled together, and readers will have trouble believing that Holly would choose (supposedly permanently) life with strangers rather than a home with her own family. Max's brother and parents are entertaining, but even when they reform they are more style than substance. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0374361983
• ISBN 13: 9780374361983
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 147