Juvenile Fiction
Hyperion
August 25, 2009
Hardcover
352
Library
Michael L. Printz Honor Book -- 2009
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father's "bunny rabbit."
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
Frankie Landau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer.
Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society.
Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew's lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.
Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.
This is the story of how she got that way.
The reviews are mixed on this one: it seems like readers either liked it or loathed it — some thought it had a great feminist message, others thought it’s message was terrible.
Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and found myself wanting to put it in the hands of all of the teenage girls I know (and I know a lot of them….).
Is it perfect in it’s feminist message? Probably not, but what I found compelling was the questions Frankie asked — questions that I wished more girls ask about the status quo and about boys and the way the world works.
It helped me that it was funny (at least, I thought it was, my sense of humor isn’t entirely mainstream…), and that it was a boarding school book — I’m a bit of a sucker for those.
I borrowed this one from the school library, and need to see if I can suggest it to a few girls of my acquaintance.
