ALLIE FINKLE’S RULES FOR GIRLS: Book Three – Best Friends and Drama Queens
by Meg Cabot
Scholastic Press
ISBN: 9780545040433
Ages 8-12
240 pages
• Read an Excerpt
Allie Finkle has been the new girl at school for a while now, but it's a position she’s happy to relinquish to another student.
In BEST FRIENDS AND DRAMA QUEENS, the third installment in Meg Cabot’s Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series, that person is Cheyenne, a haughty girl with a world-weary attitude who seems to think that everyone around her is "immature." Allie and her best friends try to include Cheyenne in their games, only to have that "i" word thrown in their faces. With that insult, they march off, determined not to be her friend. But Cheyenne, in a flurry of sophistication, decides to transform the regular schoolyard games into a kissing match, and Allie and her friends are left to their own devices. Since they aren't interested in running after boys and kissing them, the gang becomes a target of Cheyenne's nasty derision, and many of the classmates follow suit --- until it's Allie and Cheyenne in the great slumber party showdown. Guess who wins?
Allie Finkle is an EveryGirl who is easy to like and root for. She’s kind, caring, confused, funny, indignant, learning and yearning her way through prepubescence with the right balance of sassy drama and little-girl breakdown. This is a great series, and BEST FRIENDS AND DRAMA QUEENS, as this segment is so aptly named, keeps the quality stories running. From elementary school through middle school, Allie experiences friendship difficulties and traverses the early path of boy/girl relations with a degree of practicality and a refreshing nod towards wanting to stay a "kid" longer and not move too quickly into the grown-up realm in which Cheyenne thinks the rest of them are living.
Allie and her friends arrive at a level-headed decision not to "go with" the boys in their class, but it's not a choice based on fear. In a refreshing twist, it's based on the fact that the girls do just fine playing pretend and enjoying each other's company without forced relationships between the boys and the girls. This makes Allie a great role model for young girls. Teachers and parents support that decision, stating that nine-year-olds will have plenty of time for more grown-up activities when they are just that --- "grown up."
BEST FRIENDS AND DRAMA QUEENS gets an A+ for age appropriateness, the gentle way it addresses a firestarter of a topic and how the good girls win in the end. Thank you, Meg Cabot, for yet another novel that young girls will learn from and love from beginning to end.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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