Tales From My Closet

October 21, 2013
Five tenth-grade girls rotate narration duties on a bumpy road to friendship in Moses’s busy YA debut about families and fashion. Beautiful Becka’s life looks perfect, but she struggles with her therapist mother’s tendency to feature their relationship in her self-help books, as well as a disappointing crush on a French university student. Newcomer Justine discovers some unpleasant truths about her parents’ marriage, and her funky vintage clothes don’t seem right in suburban New Jersey. After a summer internship with a fashion designer, Becka’s often-overshadowed friend Robin tries to find her confidence and style as her family copes with her father’s alcoholism. Petite Ann finds a personal style when she inherits her grandmother’s 1950s clothing, but struggles to assert her interest in art and fashion to her practical mother. Less fashion-obsessed is swimmer Polly, who is anxious about her athletic figure, her coach, and her single mother’s dating. Five narrators with stories that mostly tangentially overlap make for an enormous and sometimes confusing cast of characters, but budding fashionistas will enjoy the detailed discussions of clothing, style, and identity. Ages 12–up.

November 15, 2013
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2001) meets The Devil Wears Prada (2003) in this lighter-than-air chick lit about five young fashionistas in training. Each chapter showcases one of the girls and highlights her personal issue with a telltale item from her closet. New girl Justine tries to hide the fact that her parents' marriage is crumbling behind her obsession with a paper dress from the 1960s. Model-perfect Becka may own a Donna Karan raincoat, but it doesn't protect her from her therapist mom's intrusive questions. Stylish Robin wears pajamas as regular clothes since her shopping addiction has left her penniless. Sporty Polly is a championship swimmer, but she's afraid the white designer jeans she adores will only make her large posterior look even wider. Preppy Ann hopes that if she ditches her Gap duds in favor of her grandmother's vintage threads, she will lose the academic pressure her parents put on her as well. When they all come together in the same New Jersey high school, predictable drama ensues. And even though the endings aren't all happy, the girls learn that they can depend on each other, and on their wardrobes, in times of crisis. While the voices are virtually indistinguishable from one another and the writing leans heavily toward the stereotypical and the cliched, this artfully designed package doesn't seem to care about general audiences. For junior Project Runway wannabes. (Fiction. 12-15)

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January 1, 2014

Gr 7-10-In a story reminiscent of Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Delacorte, 2001), this novel intertwines the lives of five teens who use fashion as a means of coping with the problems in their lives. Justine's sense of fashion is the one constant in her life as she is bounces from city to city to accommodate her distant father's job. Becka takes comfort in designer clothing as a means of escaping her mother, a psychologist who exposes Becka in her parenting books. Robin's obsession with fashion helps her hide the pain of living with an abusive, alcoholic father. To compensate for her father abandoning the family, Polly's mother indulges her with designer clothes when she can. Ann lives in the shadow of her older, overachieving sister until she discovers her sense of self through her grandmother's vintage wardrobe. An accident, rumored to be a suicide attempt, involving Becka initially pushes the girls apart, but when the facts surrounding the incident come out, they become closer than ever, and the book ends on a positive note. In a time when so many books written for teens push the envelope, this one manages to touch upon current issues without going too far or putting them center stage.-Nicole Knott, Watertown High School, CT

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