The Black Sheep

Fed up with her parents and all their ridiculous rules (they keep a binder full of them), fifteen-year-old Kendra Bishop writes away to The Black Sheep, a reality TV show that offers the chance to swap families with another teen. But when the camera crew shows up at her Manhattan apartment, Kendra starts to have second thoughts. Too late. Kendra’s whisked away to Monterey, California, to live with the Mulligans. The carefree household that couldn’t be more different that her own--complete with hippy parents, their five kids, and a pet ferret. And falling for Mitch, the Mulligan's seventeen-year-old son, only complicates things further, especially since Mitch despises the TV show and everything it stands for. But given the chance, Kendra might just be able to juggle first love, her new stardom, and a pushy TV producer who will stop at nothing for higher ratings.

 

In this hilarious and touching YA novel, Kendra learns to live under a new roof, but finds true refuge in the unlikeliest of places—her own family.

Grade 7–10—Fifteen-year-old Kendra, an only child, has grown up in a sterile and highly controlled Manhattan household. As she sees it, her distant parents, both bankers, are simply grooming her to assume their overprogrammed urban lifestyle. Frustrated, she enters and wins an essay contest that qualifies her to be a costar on a reality show, The Black Sheep, in which she changes places with a West Coast girl from a completely different type of family. The Mulligan household consists of a pair of aging hippies and their six children, one of whom is an attractive boy with a passion for saving threatened sea otters—a cause that Kendra quickly adopts. She discovers that it is difficult to be an amorous activist—and nearly impossible to find your true self—when you're being tailed 24/7 by a camera crew and a pushy producer. Light, predictable, happy-ending fare without much fizz.—Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI
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Fifteen-year-old Kendra Bishop is so fed up with her boring, New York banker parents and their desire to turn her into a mini version of themselves that she writes away to the reality show The Black Sheep in hopes of trading her life with some other unhappy teen. Kendra is shipped off to Monterey to live with a hippie family devoted to saving otters, while their daughter, Maya, gets to live the cultured life she has always craved in Manhattan. A culture clash ensues, pushed to the max by the ominipresent producer, Judy, who is in charge of making sure there is drama (and if there isn't, she edits the footage). The story drags when it's about the otters, for whom Kendra develops a deep affinity. It picks up when Kendra and Maya's brother, Mitch, get together, break apart, and get together. This is all hilariously over the top (though it's unfortunate that Judy, the pushy producer, has a Jewish last name). The authors have the reality-show shenanigans down pat, and there are some sharp takeoffs of folks like Dr. Phil. Au courant. Cooper, Ilene
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