Phoebe

by Patricia Dizenzo

When she finds out she is pregnant, sixteen-year-old Phoebe tries to find a way to tell her parents and her boyfriend.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, Teen

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in 1979 when I was 13. It disturbed me at the time, probably because it was very realistically written. The author really captured the dread and fear of the main character as she realizes her predicament. The book also captures something of the 1970s, when being 16, pregnant, and unmarried was a far, far worse situation to be in than it is now: families would disown daughters, force them to marry, or send them off to homes for young unmarried mothers, where the girls would give birth, hand their babies over for adoption, then return home in shame.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't usually leave written reviews, but this book has so few and it is so obscure. I found this book in a little free library with a school stamp, and it looked like an interesting relic of the 70s.

Phoebe is boring and unmotivated. She has no interests, barely keeps up in school, stay out past 7pm (!), and exclusively hangs out with her boyfriend. And she takes a lot of hot baths.

The entire book consists of Phoebe reflecting on her situation and her daydreams of various conversations about her pregnancy. She pursues an abortion lead, but being the 70s, that is illegal ends up going nowhere (a friend of a friend won't give her the name).

At the very end of the book (100 pages in), barely showing at three months-ish, she tells her boyfriend, then hangs up the phone and runs to her room. THE END. She spends all this time thinking about how she will tell her parents and boyfriend and how they will react and we never get to see this actually take place.

I'm guessing this book was favored by schools as a way to approach teen pregnancy in a non-controversial and cautionary way and promote conversation. As a book, it just seems like the author wrote a third of a book, set up the situation and lost interest before writing the good bits about how the protagonist will actually deal with all the challenges she faces.

[Starr Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

hello family and friends my name is starr im 13 years old theres so many boys in my life and my grandmother gave me this book phoebe when i was 12 years old and now im 13 what im trying to say is this book that patricia dizenzo made is amazing she did a amazing job on this book so i give her props and i could undrestand were phoebe the 16 year older is coing from i mean im 13 and shes 16 and shes pregnant by some boy named paul how will she tell her paents the altman family how will she tell paul and how will she tell her friends how will the all react to it well readers maybeu should red the book and find out

[elissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early 70's novel about teen pregnancy that I read in the late 70's. I don't remember a thing about it, except that I liked it.

[Veronica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because someone recommended it to me. To be honest, however, I didn't really like this book. Once it started getting good it was over.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember liking this in high school. Since I still like YA novels, maybe I should reread it as a senior citizen. :)

[Scarlet Robbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the first full length books I ever read. The story is realistic and you can feel Phoebe's emotions as she navigates life in school and at home. The book may be a bit dated by today's standards and can be hard to find, but it is worth the read.

[Manampy]

hi! I think phoebe'sbook is very intersting! it' s a book for teenager. it help many adolescent!
i repote this book now! Ineed help because i don' t know her biogrphy! please help me!

[Rebecca Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this way back in the late '70's. Even then, it was out of date. But, it did get the point across.

[Eirene✧˚° · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this short novel, it felt like real life, which i think many authors find difficult to write. i was a little bit sad it ended on a cliffhanger, but it was overall just very nicely written. at least i thought so :) it just feels so *real*, like a conversation a 16 year old would actually have, not those books where they just confess everything. A little detail i loved were her daydreams: she's thinking about a scenario, it's all very rose-tinted, but then somebody snaps her back into reality and is sometimes a little hard on her, and suddenly the daydream turns into doomsday. It's exactly how my thoughts work.
it is a very outdated book you could argue, but i just see it as a piece of history. You can still apply certain lessons from this book onto modern day life, even if in today's world we treat pregnancy vastly different. Phoebe didn't have a lot of interests, but i could feel her emotions very well. I found myself relating to Phoebe a lot.
It's still a book for young adults, so it's not a book for everyone, but it definitely was for me :)

[Ramona N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it in February, 1973 at the age of 14. Wrote in my diary it was “pretty good”. Now, in 2023 at the age of 64, I’m googling it to refresh my memory. I remember the cover. I remember being absorbed in the tantalizing tale. It opened my mind. Made me curious. Subsequent pages of my diary have me pondering the issue of pregnancies and because I was in parochial school, wondering why God could allow pregnancies to happen in the very young and even very old.

[Lorna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nostalgia read. I recognized the cover. I'm not sure I read it, I may have just seen it on the rack in the junior high library. Reading the synopsis, I realized this was based on a short film called Phoebe from 1964 that Mary Jo and Bridget riffed on Rifftrax. So I had to read it. Interesting ending, I assume it was to promote conversation about what she would end up doing.

[Katie Brandow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when I was around 11 or 12. It was very realistically written for the time period from what I remember, but it ended abruptly. There was no resolution, you didn’t find out what happened with her situation. It was enjoyable except for the ending.

[Febe'S Mening · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!

Gevonden in een Little Free Library.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

L0

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read while in elementary school, right before Roe v. Wade was legalized.