GRACIE’S GIRL
by Ellen Wittlinger
Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689822499
Age Level: 8-12

Read an Excerpt

Isn’t it every kid’s wish to be free to do whatever you want and not have your parents meddle? After reading about Bess Cunningham’s life you may change your mind. Bess wants to be noticed. She starts off the school year by shopping for clothes from those that were donated to the shelter…and comes up with some pretty wild combinations that are sure to get her noticed. But is it the kind of attention she really wants?

Bess wants more than anything to have her Mom notice her. But her parents seem to have time for only two things --- their jobs and volunteering to help the homeless at the Derby Street Shelter, and Bess wants nothing to do with that place. When she was a kid her parents made her go there each week to help serve food. After an old man’s teeth fell in the trash can and he asked Bess to fish them out, she cried and refused to go to the shelter ever again. She can’t understand why her parents spend so much time with these people, and none with their own family. That is, until she and her best friend Ethan meet an old woman named Grace Jarvis Battle at the dumpster behind the local food market.

Seeing a homeless person like Grace eating food from the trash makes Bess want to help, so she goes back to the shelter with her parents. Before she realizes it, Bess becomes just as involved as her parents, and is organizing people to help set up another shelter for homeless women. But it’s getting cold, and before the women’s shelter opens Grace will need a place to go. The plan Bess comes up with is brave, courageous, illegal, and also makes her responsible for the outcome. Can Bess juggle all of her responsibilities to the shelter, to Grace, and to her classmates, as the new stage manager for her school play? To Bess, the greater question is, how can she not?

This is a great book to read if you are a volunteer, or would like to become one. As Bess did, you may learn that there is great joy and satisfaction in helping people, and often, you can find a volunteer project that combines helping people with doing something that you love to do anyway.

--- Reviewed by Betsy Pabrinkis