Home for the Holidays

lionsrcute1 - In Home for the Holidays by Heather Vogel Fredrick, the character who faces the most problems is Becca. In every Mother-Daughter book club book, there is always 1 girl out of the 4 girls who has a family problem. In the book, Becca is still feeling a little uncomfortable about being friends with Emma, Cassidy, and Jess. Megan is her friend, so she is fine with her. She is uncomfortable because she used to tease Emma and Jess a lot, and she always hated Cassidy. Even worse for her, her family is having money issues, because her dad lost his job. I think that the main thing in this book is about their friendship together, and how they kept it together. Along the way, Becca messes up a few times, like stealing one of Megan’s friends, and playing mean pranks out of selfishness. In this book, I would say is when Becca is having sort of a self-conflict, because she still feels a little guilty about used being mean to all of them. She seems to really want to become their friends, but sometimes, her old habits still get in the way. Christmas was coming up, and Becca did not want any of her friends to know that her family was broke, so was always in a really bad mood, and never explaining herself, causing the other girls to get mad at her, because it seems likes Becca is jealous of something, or mad. Meanwhile, Emma and Jess, friends who have never fought before are now fighting, right before Christmas. Jess is mad at Emma, because Emma keeps listening to what Jess’s cousin, Felicia is saying about her. All of the girls keep fighting because people around them are playing pranks on them, causing them to blame each other. The story switches around to multiple points of views, and I realized that they all just misunderstood each other when they got into fights. Like what we used in class, I think the author’s goal is to show a character’s motivation, but by using different points of views for the reader to find out what was happening. The goals the author showed were what made the story interesting, in my opinion. This review was also for my home log.

October 1, 2011

Gr 6-8-In this installment in the series, the five girls, now sophomores, and their mothers are reading Maud Hart Lovelace's "Betsy-Tacy" series. None of the girls is home for the holidays, as it turns out; two take a cruise, two stay at a fairytalelike inn, and one heads off to California. Parallels to the "Betsy-Tacy" books abound as the teens quarrel, make up, obsess about boys, and worry about a parent's unemployment and a possible move. Though they take turns narrating, their voices sound the same, and their world is filled with more delicious food, fabulous trips, cunning interior decoration, and cute clothes than a women's lifestyle magazine. This will be like candy for fans of Frederick's series, many of whom will be enticed to read Lovelace's books as well.-Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library

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