Great Reading: Bookmark It!

Volume 28, Number 3, February 2001

On Becoming a Woman, Grades 6-12

Rosemary Chance

Alice on the outside. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.
Atheneum, 1999. $15.00. 0-689-80359-1 Grades 6-9. Once again Alice offers readers something to laugh about and something to think about as she explores sexuality and prejudice during her eighth grade year.

Borrowed light. Anna Fienberg.
Delacorte, 1999. $14.95. 0-385-32758-7. Grades 9 up. Callisto is 16-years-old, pregnant, and surrounded by other family problems in this beautifully written novel.

Learning to swim: A memoir. Ann Turner.
Scholastic, 2000. $14.95. 0-439-15309-3. Grades 7 up. The sexual abuse experience of Ann as a young girl is not a normal rite of passage but affects her life as a woman.

No condition is permanent. Cristina Kessler.
Philomel, 2000. $17.99. 0-399-23486-1. Grades 7 up. Jodie and her mother, an anthropologist, move to Sierra Leone, Africa, and try to fit into a primitive and ancient community that participates in a secret society of women.

Perfect family. Jerrie Oughton.
Houghton Mifflin, 2000. $15.00. 0-395-98668-0. Grades 9 up. Marie, 15-years-old, is part of the old story about a girl who gets pregnant the first time she's intimate with a boy.

Rosemary Chance is assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. She can be reached at rchance@student.necc.cc.ms.us.