The Book Selection for April…Will it be “Ah-mazing?”

 April’s addition to “Twelve Books in 2014” fell into my lap…straight out of my daughter’s backpack.  The timing couldn’t have been better, arriving on the heels of March’s book, Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman.

When I saw the sassy-appearing teen girl on the cover of The Clique Summer Collection:  Massie by Lisi Harrison, my eyebrows went up.  When I read the back cover, with its references to “The Pretty Committee” and “The Clique…the only thing harder than getting in is staying in.” I thought how Ms. Wiseman would eat Ms. Harrison (and her book) for breakfast.  However, upon further inspection of the book’s description, there is a hint that main character Massie may learn a life lesson while working for a cosmetic company “transforming LBRs (who???) into glam-girls.”  Hmmm.

I had a bit of a fit when I saw this book.  My husband thought I was overreacting (and articulated, yet again, his hammer/nail philosophy…see my post “The Brandishing of Butt Bows.”) until I showed him Massie and he changed his mind, suggesting we ask our seven-year-old daughter where she got the book.  Apparently she had won a drawing at school, an event associated with the annual reading challenge and as a result got to select a new book to bring home.  Which is wonderful.  But, curious about her selection of this clearly age-inappropriate volume (Massie even states in small print on the back cover, “Ages 12 and up.”), we asked why this was the one she chose.  I figured it was the cover photo of the pretty girl in a gauzy purple tank top but our daughter’s actual answer was a relief:  a friend of hers chose the same book.  Which seems like something a first grader would do.  Kinda sweet.

I confiscated the book anyway.

I’m glad my daughter didn’t judge the book by its cover and realized I shouldn’t, either (despite the nauseating back-cover description).   So I am going to read it.  I truly hope the lesson the heroine learns isn’t just a bone thrown to readers, overwhelmed by the “ah-mazing summer” of makeup implied by the storyline.

I look forward to finding out.