Definitely Cool - Hardcover

Wilkinson, Brenda Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0590461869 ISBN 13: 9780590461863

Publisher: Scholastic, 1993

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Roxanne leaves the security of her neighborhood middle school for a junior high school in a very upscale area

About this title

Reviews

Though books featuring people of color are welcome additions to the middle-grade fiction genre, Wilkinson's first novel will not fully satisfy readers of stories starring African Americans. Roxanne's hectic first weeks of junior high are proof that dealing with boys, peer pressure, homework and her mother's rules is a real balancing act. Common sense and loyal friends pull her through the rocky spots with generally happy results. However, a weak plot and lightweight moral dilemmas are further hampered by uneven writing. Wilkinson tries too hard to dispel stereotypes about the African American experience, and in doing so she trivializes potentially powerful themes. Issues of race, life in a housing project, single parenthood, and the merits of Black English are introduced and then tempered with pat, politically correct explanations and soon-to-be-dated references to popular culture. Perhaps in an attempt to simulate the boundless energy of 'tweens, at least one exclamation point appears, annoyingly, in nearly every paragraph. Readers may give this effort to be cool the cold shoulder. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Roxanne's exhilaration as she faces seventh grade is tempered only by her penchant for worry. While her number one homegirl, Maxine, is off to a private school on scholarship, Roxanne and others from their Bronx housing project go to public school in nearby Riverdale. Roxanne does win new friends, but keeps trying to nail down which behavior is ``cool'' and which isn't: whether to break her mother's rules about guests in order to keep the interest of an eighth-grade boy; whether to cut class for a party as the other girls in her ``group'' do. This time out, Wilkinson (Ludell, 1975, etc.) slips issues of race and economic stereotyping into well-worked territory. Familiar school-story trappings are made fresh by the setting (housing projects are all but ignored by YA writers, with the exception of Walter Dean Myers), and by an appealing, pell-mell narration peppered with exclamations marks that further hasten the pace. Readers who haven't gotten the point by the last paragraph will find somewhat clunky clarification there. Nevertheless, Roxanne's honesty and zeal, the affectionate bumbling of her longtime friend Rolland, and a liberal dose of contemporary slang make for an easy, timely slide through the first days of junior high. (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0590461869
• ISBN 13: 9780590461863
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 167