Little Divas
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The "good" girl
Cassidy has let her parents, her strong-willed cousin and best friend, Rikki, and cruel classmates push her around long enough. Before school starts, she WILL become independent.
The "bad" girl
Rikki also wants independence, mostly from her preacher father and perfect older sister. But secretly she doesn't mind having her goody-goody cousin around to keep her in line. Without Cassidy, it would be easy to go too far.
The "new" girl
Golden is new to town, and she's got all the freedom she wants. What she needs is a parent to actually listen to her. But at least she has some new friends to help her deal.
For all three girls, life is changing fast. If they're going to make it to seventh grade, they'd better summon their inner divas -- because sometimes having a little attitude and a little respect for yourself is the only way to get what you want.
In Little Divas, Philana Marie Boles delivers a sassy, spirited tale of loyalty, family, and friendship.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Narrating Boles's (Blame It on Eve, for adults) rather thin first novel for children is 12-year-old Cassidy, whose life is in flux. The African-American narrator's parents have recently divorced and she is living with her musician father while her mother spends a year in Africa. She laments that she and Rikki, her cousin and best friend, don't have as much fun together as they once did ("We used to do regular stuff, like riding our bikes all day but going nowhere"), ever since Rikki became obsessed with boys. And Cassidy feels betrayed by her father when she learns through others that he is contemplating sending her to a private school, and that he is dating. So Cassidy decides to turn the tables and keep some secrets from him. In an unduly protracted scene in which she gets her first kiss ("Will you be my lady?" the boy asks), she and her friends attend a pool party without telling their parents. A jarring conclusion finds Mary, Rikki's 16-year-old sister (whom the younger girls regularly cover for when she sneaks out to rendezvous with her boyfriend), returning home from a date to present Rikki, Cassidy and a new friend of theirs with condoms, insisting they are "never... to do the grown up without one." Though Boles's amiable heroine weathers some credible, stormy changes, a surfeit of dialogue and extraneous detail slow the pace. Ages 10-up.
