The Secret Files of Lisa Weiss; Social Worker-In-Training

A humorous account of a young woman's attempts to use her friends as subjects for her career in social work.

Gr 5-8-Lisa Weiss is an Orthodox Jew living in Israel. The women of her family have all been social workers, and she plans to follow in their footsteps, but her father prefers that she keep her options open. When he catches her reading her mother's social-work book instead of doing her homework one too many times, the seventh grader makes a bargain with her dad. She will write case studies of six people in the next six months, including how she helped them and what she learned about herself in the process. If she shows promise, then she will be allowed to pursue her dream. There is nothing new here. The case studies provide a framework to show a variety of disjointed incidents in Lisa's life. The characters are stereotypical (a Holocaust survivor, a Russian immigrant, a bitter girl with divorced parents, a pesky younger sister, etc.). She goes over the cases with her mother and learns an "important lesson" each time. In the end, she realizes that, although she still plans to be a social worker, it is important to do her schoolwork now. An additional purchase.-Yapha Nussbaum Mason, Brentwood Lower School, Los Angeles

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