| Jane Purdy is fifteen and a sophomore in high school.
No one has ever asked her for a date except George, an unromantic
boy who is an inch shorter than she is and talks of nothing but his
rock collection. Then she meets Stan: tall, good-looking, resourceful
and sixteen years old-all she ever dreamed of. The circumstances are
trying. Jane is baby-sitting for Sandra Norton, the toughest assignment
in town. Stan appears just in time to prevent Sandra, by a skillful
use of pig Latin, from emptying a bottle of ink onto the Nortons'
blond living-room carpet. But I'll never see him again, Jane tells
herself despairingly the next day. I'm just not the type to interest
an older man. And then one evening the telephone rings....
No reader can fail to share Jane's breathless excitement or the
shattering ups and downs of her friendship with Stan. Because Jane's
problems are their own, girls approaching fifteen will take her
to their hearts. So will everyone who has ever been fifteen.
How Jane emerges from the agonizing awkwardness of adolescence
is the theme of a book whose humor matches that of Mrs. Cleary's
earlier stories and whose warm understanding carries it to a new
height. It is hard to think of any other American writer who has
so successfully put on paper the sorrows and joys and absurdities
of girlhood.
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