Sorry about the Norwegian cover, and that it show a lot of wear as I've had it for a long time. As you can see, I really liked to read this book ;) When I was a child, I thought the girls in the cover pictures were super gorgeous. Now I think they're just meh-pretty. And I see that several of them could be wearing wigs. The front cover is this kind of Myspace pic that only Ana would be happy about, as it shows her from a better side than the others.
Barbie's just arrived in the Jenners' home in New York. She's traveled all the way from California. Sorry, she's not a vegetarian and California Casual. If we're lucky, she has an evil twin, though. In this story, she's a fifteen year sophomore with dreams of making it in the actor's business. She's starting at a new school in New York, New York. So welcome to the world of fashion, maths and hopefully not diabetes.
Barbie enjoys her new room. "Call me Terri" Mrs. Jenner and Barbie looks out of the window and admire the gorgeous view. For some reason, I do not like any of the adults in this story. They all fall flat, Sam, Terri, Selma, the Principal and Mr Toussaint.
Heck, she barely knows them, they could force her to join their home-made cult, she could become Mr. Jenner's second wife and get pregnant with him, all while being forced to prepare animal sacrifices? Hey, stranger things has happened in real life before. So Barbie and Terri are all buddy buddy and have a little girlie chat.
Barbie admits that starting a new school is overwhelming. Terri think she's very brave and will probably make new friends soon. It's nice to have a teenager in the house again after their little Scott went and joined the peace corps. For some reason, I'm picturing her son as Sheridan Bouquet.
They have a meal at Sam's restaurant, which is supposed to be some fancy place with lots of athmosphere and then Barbie emails her sisters. I think it's very sweet that they get a little nod. One of Sam's friends is an agent, and she can help Barbie with finding acting jobs.
Next day. Barbie changes her outfit a million time before deciding to wear capri pants, a white top and a denim jacket. She eats eggs, a pear and bagel and runs to the train.
So Barbie gets on the underground. There she gives an elderly man with a cane a seat for the disabled, but a dirty looking man steals the seat. Then a girl with blonde pigtails, an Australian accent and rollerblades tells the rude guy off and calls the attention of all the people in there, so the man is forced to leave the seat and everybody cheers for the old gentleman.
Barbie gets off the train and notices that the map in her information brochure is missing. She sees a girl with Manhattan International High School written on her shoulder bag. The girl on roller blades almost runs her down. Lara, the girl with the bag, is just as confused as Barbie is about finding the way to MIH and her brochure is also missing page 3 with the map. They ask a policeman about the way. Lara is half German and half Italian. She grew up in France, has lived in three different countries, and transferred to MIH when her father got a job in New York. She's carrying a huge box containing her paintings and paint supplies. Lara gives Barbie one of her hand-painted post cards as a gift.
Lara's old school was very strict and her father wanted her to paint in the same style as one of his friends, a famous artist. Lara wanted to change schools and paint in her own style to express herself, so she made a bet with her father that if she won a art contest, got top grades in school, and learnt to paint in the style of the well known artist, she could choose schools herself. She won the bet and the whole family moved to New York when her father got the job. Barbie's parents are away to China as archaeologists. Lara looks a bit sad when they talk about family being together. Foreshadowing...They meet Principal Simmons and get directions to their classes. Then all new students take some food and Barbie and Lara sits with Ana and Randall. Ana is a very sporty and organized girl who's training for the New York Maraton. Randall is a shy boy which seems to be dressed as a geeky metalhead. He barely speaks to the girls and draws super heroes on his notepad. It's a reference to WTC in this chapter, so that felt a bit odd and sad to read now.
Lara is off to art class and Barbie to English with Mr. Toussaint. I don't know why, but Toussaint seems like the type that's described as very charming, but would probably be more annoying than charming in real life. Something about him just rubs me the wrong way. Many advisors with the "I always keep my door open" policy tends to come across as creeps both in real life and in books.
The students complain about elevators and other stuff that's not working yet. Toussaint says that he feel proud to educate such different students. And this is a great school because it has so many great people and learning opportunities, so who cares that it's only half finished anyway? So... lots of propaganda, I mean neutral information about why public school totally ROCK and private school totally SUCK. Yawn.
Toussaint asks for two people for demonstration. Barbie volunteers, and a sweet and shy girl named Chelsie is the second volunteer. Barbie has to tie a bow around Chelsies neck with Mr. Toussaint's tie. Then all the other pupils should write down how Barbie made the bow. Barbie will then follow their instructions to make the bow again. None of students wrote how she made the bow down correctly. We're introduced to Writing=honesty=truth for the first time. The class should work together in pairs and write a biography of 150 words about each other for homework.
When Barbie's class is over, she's going to meet Lara. Lara is screaming about a girl which stole her box of paints. Barbie recognizes the girl as Tori. Is Tori trustworthy? Or has she really stolen Lara's paintbox?
Lara just left the box for a short time when she had a drink of water, and then she saw the other girl going off on rollerblades carrying her box. Barbie explains that she has proof of Tori's niceness, and she thinks Lara should wait before involving the police. Lara doubtfully follows her advice. The girls are hungry, so they go off to Eatz. They talk about Nichelle, the model and the Pants Boys. Barbie goes home to do the biography. She got a call from Selma Devine, and they'll meet up and talk about possible auditions and jobs for Barbie soon. Barbie writes a short biography about Chelsie and mentions her pricewinning song about homelessness.
Barbie is early at school to try to find the name of the Australian girl. She convinces the janitor, Pugasjov to let her in. There's only two Australian girls in the whole school, Tori Burns and Glenda Eastwick. Barbie meets Chelsie before she's off to have history with Budge, the slightly weird history teacher. Then English with Toussaint again, the students read their biographies out loud with the names censored, and the other kids try to guess who the biographies are about.
Both Chelsie and Barbie plans on trying out for the school paper. Barbie is in gym class after eating lunch with Chelsie, Ana and Nichelle. She pays a lot of attention when the teacher calls out the name Glenda Eastwick. Glenda is a skinny redhead with braces. So it's not Glenda, Miss Plain Jane either. Then it's either Tori Burns or the girl isn't a MIH pupil.
It's meeting time for Barbie and Selma Devine at the restaurant. She sounds kind of odd, but not as odd as when I read the book for the first time. She's known Terri and Sam since they were young.
Lol, if the three of them were friends and Terri and Sam ended up married, were they ever a love triangle? Were there ever any sensual tension between Sam and Selma? Or heck, Selma and Terri? But then only two of them got married. And now you're a family man, a football fan and your name is Harry. Are Terri and Ms. Devine foot flirting under the table and making inappropriate jokes about eating out? All while Sam impregnates Barbie of course.
And why is Sam never at home? If I skimmed the text, I'd miss that he's Terri's husband. He greets this fifteen year old girl he's known for a short time with a kiss on the cheek. Selma wants to be Barbie's agent. She has an audition idea for her, in one of Lee Quigley commercials for Crumbly Cookies, Barbie has very short time to learn her lines, but she's really pleased.
Chelsie congratulates Barbie, which has told all her new friends about the commercial. Chelsie knows Tori, and will bring her a message about meeting Barbie after the last class. Tori is going climbing, but Barbie could go after her if she needs to see her at once. Barbie follows Tori to Chelsea Piers which is *googles* also real. She's impressed by Tori's climbing skills, especially since she has a big sore below her knee. Tori is all "Yo, wallaby!" They talk about what happened on the train and the paint box incident. Tori tells
"Lara put her paint box outside by the fountain. Then some random guy went by on rollerblades and picked up the box and stole it. Tori went after him, the guy dropped the box like a hot potato. Tori picked up the box and followed him, looking for a police man. Then Tori fell and hurt her knee going after him." I don't get why she doesn't put any kind of bandage or band-aid on it, doing sports with a big open sore on your knee sound gross and unhygienic. Tori gave Lara's box to Poogy the janitor, so could bring it back to it's correct owner.
Barbie trains for her role as Chipper Girl. She goes through the role many times, watches a lot of cookie commercials, learns to recognize the cookies blindfolded and pratices making that special crumble sound. Barbie and Ana sits in sience class dissecting a cow's eye. Barbie talks Ana into going with her to the school newspaper's office after school. Chelsie, Nichelle and Lara are also there. They'll name the school paper Generation Beat, which was Nichelle's suggestion. Tori arrives late. Lara accuses her of stealing the paintbox. Toussaint calms them down and they sit scowling at each other for the rest of the class. Poogy arrives and gives Lara her box back. He says the Tori delivered the box to him, and then Tori explains the whole situation. Lara thanks Tori and Poogy and the newspaper gang goes out to celebrate with pizza.
Before her audition, Barbie has a nightmare about a giant cookie. Barbie auditions, with five gorgeous girls who are all blonde and taller than her. She plays her heart out and at last Barbie is up against the shy and nervous girl.The shy girl makes the better cookie crumble noises, so she gets the part. It's all quite a shock for Barbie.
But.... She gets a better deal! Barbie will star in a commercial for Dominique jeans, which is more high profile than Crumbly cookies. When I grow up I wanna be famous, wanna be a star, wanna have boobies... She hopes they'll let her keep some of the jeans. The book ends with a cute and happy email to Skipper, Stacie and Shelly.
In the back, there's a little "neswsaper article" about the school. I was a weird kid and loved article-form fiction. And there's some advice to kids about how they can make their own newspaper, and reminding them of Mr. Toussaint's sentence. Writing=honesty=truth.
*And to any Australians who reads this, no offence, I love you. I'm not mocking Aussies, I'm mocking the books' need to emphasis her heritage. All Australians I've talked to on discussion boards and Ebay has been very cool and nice.
This book in one word: Sweet.
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