I Was a Teenage Fairy

Starred review from September 28, 1998
This disarming new book by the ever-inventive Block (the Weetzie Bat books) seems at once more fantastic and more of a YA "problem novel" than her previous titles. At about the same time that her ex-beauty queen mom pushes her into modeling, 11-year-old Barbie--named after the doll--meets Mab, an acid-tongued, winged beauty: "a teenage girl-thing who was the size of most teenage girls' littlest fingers." Block proposes different ways to understand Mab: "Maybe Mab was real... Maybe not. Maybe Mab was the fury. Maybe she was the courage. Maybe later on she was the sex." In any event, Mab's friendship sustains Barbie after she is molested by a prominent photographer, a violation her mother aggravates by turning her head the other way. The novel jumps ahead five years, when Barbie has a flourishing career as a model but is stunted emotionally and artistically (she wants to be a photographer but can't summon the creative energy). Here the characters and settings will be familiar to the author's fans: a glamorous would-be boyfriend with a profoundly sympathetic gay best friend; impossibly hip restaurants and clubs; a house converted from a legendary Hollywood hotel. Barbie finally overcomes her psychic wounds by unmasking the predatory photographer; in this section, Block compares Barbie and Mab to comic book superheroes, and in fact, they behave with an exaggerated flatness, as if the author were squeezing them into a happy ending one or two sizes too small. Elsewhere, however, the writing is among Block's supplest. The prose, less obviously lush than in previous books, sustains steady crescendos of insight. This fairy tale is too pointedly a social critique to be entirely magical, but its spell feels real. Ages 12-up.

Starred review from December 1, 1998
Gr 9 Up-In a modern fairy-tale world of teen-model Princesses, movie-star Prince Charmings, and adult Giants, a tiny fairyperson named Mab appears to a sad little girl who is being consumed by her mother's ambitions. Will Barbie (named for the doll) escape the voracious commercial world of beauty pageants and modeling? Can she survive the glitzy wilderness of the Los Angeles drugs-sex-money-and-fame scene to find true love and, more importantly, herself? Or will her mother's fixation on transforming Barbie into a supermodel destroy her daughter's soul? With the help of the tart-tongued, drop-dead honest, outrageously camp Mab, who is no bigger than Barbie's pinkie finger, the girl plunges into adolescence, toward the Holy Grail of autonomy. For Barbie, and other child models, one of the biggest Ogres in the path is the pedophilic photographer Hamilton Waverly. Although what he does to them is only alluded to, the spiritual, emotional, and sexual damage he causes is clearly portrayed. Fortunately, Barbie, who is 16 in part two, has Mab to push her beyond the hurt and confusion toward life and love on her own terms. In less-skilled hands, these themes could have become diatribes, but Block's vision is so honest, her understanding of human frailty so compassionate, her prose so inventive and electric that-like Mab on her impossible wings-the book takes glorious flight. Daring metaphors, a rich mix of classical and pop-culture allusions, and playful use of contemporary idioms make this book as aesthetically satisfying as it is insightful.-Carolyn Lehman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA