Venola in Love - Hardcover

Ware, Cheryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 053133306X ISBN 13: 9780531333068

Publisher: Orchard Books, 2000

Synopsis

In a series of diary entries and email letters, Venola describes how her boring year in seventh grade turned exciting after the arrival of a handsome new student. By the author of Catty-Cornered.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

"I promise to carry you with me in my backpack at all times and to protect you from prying eyes as I capture the most exciting and heart-wrenching moments of the second half of my seventh-grade year," writes Ware's (Sea Monkey Summer) plucky title character in her new diary. In its pages, Venola confidesAcandidly, comically and often melodramaticallyAgoings-on at school and at home, where she is the youngest of six children, with a new baby on the way. Once her family acquires a computer, Venola also bares her soul in e-mail messages to her best friend, Sally, and occasionally to her brother's big-hearted girlfriend, Gwen (who happens to be the sister of Nathan, a new boy in Venola's class, and the ultimately unrequited love interest alluded to in the novel's title). Readers will grin easily at many of the preteen's observations, among them her description of square dancing during gym class, when "The boys approach us like it's some kind of primal battlefield, and pass us back and forth with such velocity that some girls come near to passing out, but others of us have learned to stomp toes with the best of the guys." Sorra creates humorous doodles on Venola's diary pages, and the heroine's ingenuous voice moves this tale along at a perky pace. Ages 8-12. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

In this sequel to Catty-Cornered (1998), Venola is now in the second half of the seventh grade and has become quite boy-crazy. Although she's never had a boyfriend, she has purchased a journal with the hope that something exciting will happen so that she might write about it. Well, lo and behold, a new hunky guy, Nathan, enters her school and thus becomes the primary topic of Venola's journal entries. The most interesting aspect of this book is the format; the story unfolds through e-mails, journal entries and class notes, which the reader experiences entirely from Venola's point of view. No responses are ever seen. There are a few diversions from Venola's obsession with Nathan and her efforts to capture him: she discovers two of her friends are shoplifting and that her parents are going to have yet another baby (they already have 6 children!). By the end, Nathan reveals himself to be rather dull and to have a smoking habit. Venola thinks she might have a crush on someone else. The story closes with worthy food for thought: "Could it be that I just wanted to be IN LOVE, and that was more important than the WHO?" Overall, in spite of the interesting format, Venola's story is insipid and uninspiring (line drawings)
--Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2000

About this edition

• Publisher: Orchard Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 053133306X
• ISBN 13: 9780531333068
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156
• Illustrator: Sorra Kristin