Julie Tells Her Story

American Girl: Julie #2

by Megan McDonald

Julie is working on her school project, "The Story of My Life," and enjoying it, until she has to write about "The Worst Thing That Ever Happened." That would be her parents divorce, and she doesn t want to tell classmates about it. After her big basketball game ends badly, she decides that could be her "worst thing." But as her family rallies around her, Julie learns to be more hopeful for their future. The "Looking Back" section explores school life in the 1970s. Author: Megan McDonald. Paperback or Hardcover. 104 pages.

This book is the second in a series of six historical books filled with inspiring lessons of compassion, courage, and friendship. Julie s entire book set includes: Meet Julie; Julie Tells Her Story; Happy New Year, Julie; Julie and the Eagles; Julie s Journey; and Changes for Julie.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Childrens, Fiction, Historical, Middle Grade, Chapter Books, Juvenile

104 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

"Sometimes I think I am Judy Moody," says Megan McDonald, author of the Judy Moody series, the Stink series, and THE SISTERS CLUB. "I'm certainly moody, like she is. Judy has a strong voice and always speaks up for herself. I like that."

For Megan McDonald, being able to speak up for herself wasn't always easy. She grew up as the youngest of five sisters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father, an ironworker, was known to his coworkers as "Little Johnny the Storyteller." Every evening at dinner the McDonalds would gather to talk and tell stories, but Megan McDonald was barely able to get a word in edgewise. "I'm told I began to stutter," she says, leading her mother to give her a notebook so she could start "writing things down."


Critically acclaimed, the Judy Moody books have won numerous awards, ranging from a PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Best Book of the Year to an International Reading Association Children's Choice. "Judy has taken on a life of her own," the author notes, with nearly 3 million Judy Moody books in print. Interestingly, the feisty third-grader is highly popular with boys and girls, making for a strong base of fans who are among Megan McDonald's strongest incentives to keep writing, along with "too many ideas and a little chocolate." And now -- by popular demand -- Judy Moody's little brother, Stink, gets his chance to star in his own adventures! Beginning with STINK: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING KID, three more stories, and his own encyclopedia, STINK-O-PEDIA, Stink's special style comes through loud and strong -- enhanced by a series of comic strips, drawn by Stink himself, which are sprinkled throughout the first book. About the need for a book all about Stink, Megan McDonald says, "Once, while I was visiting a class full of Judy Moody readers, the kids, many with spiked hair à la Judy's little brother, chanted, 'Stink! Stink! Stink! Stink! Stink!' as I entered the room. In that moment, I knew that Stink had to have a book all his own."


More recently, Megan McDonald has recalled some of her own childhood with the warmth, humor -- and squabbles -- of three spunky sisters in THE SISTERS CLUB.


Megan McDonald and her husband live in Sebastopol, California, with two dogs, two adopted horses, and fifteen wild turkeys that like to hang out on their back porch.

Reviews

[Katie]

The great AG marathon continues. Reading this for the first time as an adult, here's what stands out:

There's nothing really wrong with this one – it's a perfectly good continuation of all the elements of Meet Julie. But there's really nothing new that we didn't have before, so it starts to feel a little flat.

Julie's still really upset by her parents' divorce, sometimes she fights with her sister, she loves being silly with Ivy, and she's enjoying her spot on the basketball team even though it isn't easy being the only girl. (Though we only ever see kids from another team giving her a hard time – from what we see of her team, the guys seem to have accepted her.)

Julie tells Tracy that she shouldn't blame only Dad for their parents' divorce: both parents are equally divorced. And Tracy seems to accept the correction, but it made me wonder: was Dad having an affair with a stewardess or something? At 15, Tracy might know more about the causes of the divorce than Julie...

But in the end, Julie makes a connection that pulled this book up from 3 stars to 4. She remembers her dad saying that his broken foot healed stronger than before, and connects this to her own broken family: her relationships with each member can be stronger than ever. That's lovely, and it also made me think about how many broken things we have in this book: the pot for Tracy's spider plant, Julie's finger. Maybe not A+ thematic work, but overall, pretty good. And I do love Julie's last minute decision to change her report and truly talk about the thing she doesn't want to talk about. It takes guts, and she takes a deep breath and does it.

More Julie babble:
Meet Julie | Julie Tells Her Story | Happy New Year, Julie | Julie and the Eagles | Julie's Journey | Changes for Julie

Good Luck, Ivy

The Tangled Web | The Puzzle of the Paper Daughter | The Silver Guitar | Lost in the City | Message in a Bottle

A Brighter Tomorrow

[Ciara]

the cover photo is an illustration of julie interviewing her mother using the tape recorder her father bought for her in japan. when i saw this illustration & realized that julie's mom is a ginormous hippie, i started to wonder if perhaps the albrights' marriage broke up because ma albright started having an affair with hank, the grizzled hippie veteran who is always baking zucchini bread & organizing petitions.

julie's story continues to be a yawn. in this book, julie's class is given an assignment. they have to write their autobiographies. they are encouraged to interview their parents about what they were like when they were children, & address the topics "the best thing that ever happened to me" & "the worst thing that ever happened to me". julie is intrigued by the assignment until she hears about the "worst thing" aspect. she feels that the worst thing that ever happened to her was her parents' divorce. hey, julie? get over it. i bet it was way worse for your parents than it was for you. when the teacher adds that the kids will be expected to do oral presentations of their autobiographies in front of their classmates, julie is even more dismayed. she doesn't want to admit to the entire class that her parents are divorced (even though it was established in meet julie that most of her classmates at least suspect that reality, even if it hasn't been totally confirmed--this series sucks when it comes to continuity).

julie gets a little more excited about the assignment when her dad gives her a cool tape recorder. she interviews him & he talks about how he broke his leg or something when he was julie's age. he explains that the bone grew back even stronger at the fracture site than it had been before. hmmm, i wonder if julie will pick up on this thinly-veiled aphorism & apply it to her experience as a child of divorce? *rolls eyes*

there is also a long, tedious scene in which julie goes to her friend ivy's house. ivy is basically a poster child for the chinese american experience. ivy & julie spend a lot of time painting chinese characters on pages ripped from the phone book. this is an activity that ivy supposedly loves. bear this in mind when i review good luck, ivy, in which ivy claims to hate painting chinese characters & claims to suck at it. wherefore art thou, consistent characterization?

there is also a long scene that didn't make any sense to me in which julie's older sister, tracy, asks julie to plant-sit. apparently tracy is doing a science experiment involving a spider plant, but she wants to go to a party where she & her teenage friends are going to see how many people they can fit in a VW bug. after that, they're going to take off all their clothes, drop acid, & eat some california cheeseburgers before murdering sharon tate. or maybe not. but the VW bug part is real. julie agrees to take on the plant-sitting job, &...i'm not master gardener, but i think a spider plant is going to be A-okay just hanging out on a desk alone for twelve hours. it does not require supervision. especially supervision in the form of a nine-year-old girl who immediately manages to knock the plant out the window so its pot shatters on the sidewalk outside. julie then stuff the plant into her purse & hightails it to some shopping strip to pick up a new planter. the spider plant had been potted in a planter shaped like a purple hippo. julie selects a pink pig-shaped planter & hopes her sister won't notice the difference. um...really? i guess sometimes nine-year-olds are kind of dumb. let's move on.

julie plays in a big basketball game & gets knocked down & somehow manages to break her finger. she has to miss the rest of the game & she decides this will be her "worst thing ever" for her paper. but, bonus: after she gets out of the ER, her entire family goes out to dinner--their first all-family time together since the divorce. somehow this inspires julie to change her paper & admit that her parents are divorced & that was her "worst thing ever," but she will come back stronger in the place where her family fractured. *puke*

also, rather than delivering her paper in person, she sets up her tape recorder & just plays her interviews as is. i mean, supposedly she edited them together into something coherent, but i don't know how she managed to do that without a tape splicer & real-time playback apparatus, etc. unless that was a damn nice tape recorder. i feel that the "reading aloud" portion of the assignment was probably a test of public speaking & julie should be marked down for using a tape recorder. but whatever. i guess it's obvious that i don't really care for julie or her stories.

[Panda Incognito]

This is one of the better Julie books. The subplot about a houseplant is completely extraneous and a waste of pages, but I enjoyed Julie's character growth and her ultimate willingness to be honest with her classmates about how her parents' divorce was her worst life experience. She overcomes the sense of shame that she feels, and is able to be vulnerable and honest.

Her thought processes are relatable and realistic, and I also enjoyed the period detail of her recording interviews with family members on a tape recorder. The one in the illustrations looks a lot like the hand-me-down tape recorder from Mom that my siblings and I grew up with, and this element of the story is what I always fondly remembered after bailing on the series in 2007. Also, just like I remembered, Julie's older sister called her "Miss Watergate" after she used the tape recorder to spy on her. Good times.

This book has a lot of great period details, and the historical note briefly addresses a number of ways that the school environment changed for seventies kids. When I originally read this, it was my first experience learning about integration from a source other than my parents' stories, and it fascinated me to see in print the kinds of things that we had talked about. (I later learned about it in school, of course, but had only studied earlier eras at that time.)

The historical note focuses on the protests and tensions in the North, and I wish that it had addressed the violence and terrorism that occurred in parts of the South during the integration process. However, I appreciate the book's balanced perspective on people's feelings about this issue, since the author acknowledges that even though some white Americans opposed integration for discriminatory, racist reasons, others simply felt an attachment to their neighborhood school or didn't want their children to have to ride on the bus for hours. The historical note fairly addresses the range of reasons why the integration process was difficult for people, but I wish that the author had included details about what it was like in the South.

[Hannah Showalter]

ivy is always being strung along for julie’s schemes lol, poor girl. love the conversations about divorce in julie’s books!

[Bailey]

This one brought me back!! I remember this story so vividly--the potted plant hippo, the basketball game scene...Julie was most definitely a huge influence on my love of basketball and why I joined so many teams at this age; I wanted to be just like her, the best ball handler! I also really remember when the schools changed in 5th grade and wanting to seek out a guy best friend (hopefully one that would give me a fun nickname) just like Julie!

[RaspberryRoses]

this book treads a lot of the same ground book 1 does. i really wish here the books had explored why her parents got divorced. they seem on amicable enough terms. and im sure the fact they got divorced is what allows that. but i wish the books had anything to say on the matter.

[Rose]

Okay no disrespect to Miss Julie and not to invalidate her trauma or whatever, but there’s just something kinda funny about Julie coming from the American Girl canon where characters have dead parents, have their best friend die, are literally enslaved, get kidnapped, etc., and the The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Julie is her parents getting a divorce.


Also, can we take a minute to acknowledge how unbelievably messed up it would be to make your students write about the worst thing that ever happened to them in their life and then make them read it out loud to the whole class??????? Take away Ms. Hunter’s teaching credentials immediately I’m so serious.

[Jacqueline M.]

Nope. Mattel was trying too hard with this series. It misses all the warmth of the original girls and all of the real trauma too. Like Addy being forced to eat multiple hornworms in the tobacco field or Nellie witnessing a girl with long hair lose her scalp in a thread factory are indeed horrifying images, but they are necessary to show the reality of the history these girls are living through. To this day I do not work in my garden without thinking of the horrors of enslavement. No museum showing me a whip ever had that effect, though I've visited many.

This series, however, just feels like they're trying to force a bunch of "checkboxes" into a series. It doesn't work. I care nothing for this character and her first world problems. "Oh no. I don't want to talk about my parents being divorced in my school essay". Girl. Vietnam veterans' mental health crisis is happening right outside. The Dow lost 40% of its value overnight due to the oil crisis of the previous years and inflation would make your mom's hippie store irrelevant. And due to said oil crisis everyone had to drive 55 miles per hour with a new speed limit requirement. IDK Mattel, maybe you could have woven in some of these things because Valarie Tripp would've.

I checked out the whole series from the library and will read more, but right now I hate it.

[Sadie]

This book centers around Julie telling her life story for a school project. This makes her confront her feelings in regard to her parents’ divorce and her relationship with her sister. I got a kick out of her recording her sister’s phone conversation. I am very curious to hopefully find out in future books what Tracy knows about the divorce- it’s like gossip to me. The history section at the end seems dated now because it mentions DVDs as modern technology! Ha!

[Kristel]

I’m really liking Julie’s story arc so far!

[Danielle]

This is a sweet story about Julie learning to face head-on the worst thing that's ever happened to her - her parents' divorce.

[Laurel!]

the next series I read will be one written by Valorie Tripp.

[Erin Becker]

The story itself is fine, maybe a three or four but OH MY GOD the historical note! I didn't think it was POSSIBLE for AG to get school integration this wrong.

[Katelyn]

One of my favorite American Girl characters ♥ The American Girl book series allows people to go back in time and being able to explore what life was like. I have 4 books out of the many out there but each one is my favorite.

[Sesana]

Re-read 2023: Well, this book didn't hold up quite as well to a second reading. There's an entire subplot with a plant that doesn't make sense and doesn't really do anything. Older sister Tracy is caring for a plant as part of a school science project and asks Julie to babysit it while she goes to a party. Huh? It's a blatantly contrived way to let Julie fool with the thing and, of course, nearly ruin it. Because who gets a plant minder for literally half a day? Julie's part of the plot at least makes sense. Yes, it's an incredibly bad idea for a teacher to assign students a project where they need to share the worst moment of their lives out loud in front of the entire class, but it's the sort of incredibly bad idea a lot of teachers even today would have. Her basketball coach is weirdly absent from even the basketball subplot, I guess because he was so cartoonishly sexist in the first book that McDonald couldn't figure out how to make him an effective coach to Julie in the very next book.

Also, I can't stop obsessing over Julie's parents' divorce. We still know nothing about the divorce, their marriage, what life was like in the house just before they divorced... And Julie is so neutral about it that it feels kind of weird, especially when her older sister is hostile towards their father. Is she unreasonably blaming their father for the divorce? Is Julie just wallpapering over bad memories to maintain a relationship with her father? I genuinely don't know. For me as an adult reader, it's distracting, because not having that information means I can't actually figure out the relationships. Would a kid care this much? I don't know that, either.

[Meghan]

The whole broken bones heal stronger analogy doesn't work out. Broken bones heal weaker. She should have known not to throw her basketball indoors, so I couldn't really sympathize with her. Also, the part when she's in the ER wasn't very accurate.

[Rachel B]

#5 in the Julie main series in my opinion. This book was 3.5 stars for me, rounded up to a 4 because it was sweet and I enjoyed it. Again the Julie books don't seem to have the "time and place" charm of some of the older American Girl books (or even Melody's books, which are from a decade before Julie's but feel a LOT older and a lot more evocative of a specific time and place). The story was cute, but I didn't feel as engaged or immersed in it as I have in some of the other American Girl books. I probably would have liked it more if I was nine, though; I probably would have found a lot more of it relatable.

Julie being a pesky little sister and eavesdropping on Tracy's phone call and then teasing her about having a boyfriend didn't thrill me. I guess it's realistic; she's nine. But I was just bored by that plot line, especially when Tracy is generally pretty nice to Julie (helping her study in the last book, practicing basketball with her in this one, in general taking an interest in her life and hobbies). I guess the point of all that was to have the Watergate reference, which her mom did explain pretty well for the target audience, but I really could have done without this plot line.

The plant plot line also didn't thrill me. Why does Julie need to tease Tracy about a school assignment? Why couldn't she just agree to watch the plant for the weekend? It required basically no effort. And I didn't love Julie being irresponsible throwing the basketball in the house and destroying the plant. I did like how forgiving Tracy was even when the plant died, and I like that she knew all along that Julie had broken the planter and replaced it, but she didn't get mad at Julie or give her any hard time. Again, Julie should be nicer to her.

There were some other cute moments in this book, like Julie and Ivy playing with the tape recorder, Julie's sweet relationship with her dad, the cultural references to Charlotte's Web and Jaws, Julie and Tracy not being allowed to stretch the phone cord but doing it anyway (relatable content!), etc.

Julie's school assignment rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning, and I hope it's something that wouldn't happen today. I hope teachers today are attuned enough to the fact that some children have experienced real trauma that they might not want to share with the class (or with the teacher!) that they wouldn't be asking kids to write about the worst thing that ever happened to them, or making assumptions that every kid has a mom and a dad (it's really only a 50 year period or so where that would have been assumed, since, say, Samantha didn't have a mom and a dad, Molly's dad was away in a war, Kit's dad was considering leaving for Chicago, etc). I felt really bad for Julie having to decide how to handle the assignment and whether to mention her parents' divorce. I liked how she handled it in the end and that she felt confident talking about the divorce to her class - but it's a heavy burden to put on a kid, and again why the assignment wasn't fair to her or to other kids who also may have been dealing with difficult things at a young age.

I liked Julie's mom and dad being a united front in co-parenting their kids and not letting the divorce impact their parenting. I loved that Julie's dad called Julie's mom to let her know when Julie hurt her finger, and I loved Julie's mom stopping Tracy from yelling at her dad. They are really great role models for how to remain amicable and supportive of their family even after a divorce. Julie's joy at seeing her mom AND dad together at the hospital after she's broken her finger felt exactly spot on to me; it brought back memories of when I got sick as a teenager with bronchitis and was having trouble breathing and both of my parents showed up at the hospital and even though I was in a lot of physical pain, I was super happy because it was the first time in many years that my divorced parents had been in the same room together and being nice to each other and to me. I imagine this is a scene that will resonate with lots of kids of divorced parents!

Overall, this story was sweet, but it didn't delve into particularly deep or interesting issues the way some of the other American Girl books do, so I'd give it 3.5 stars, rounded up for my enjoyment of it.

[Laura Edwards]

I figured out why I'm not a big fan of the Julie books. After reading "Meet Julie" and writing my review, I read other reviews of the book and found out that the author, Megan McDonald, is the same person who wrote the Judy Moody books. My niece and I read a couple of those books when she was young and neither of us cared for them. But I will continue on and complete my reading of the American Girl series. I only wish they had entrusted Julie to Valerie Tripp (my favorite American Girl author) or even Janet Beeler Shaw or Denise Lewis Patrick. I think the Julie series would have turned out much better.

Again, the writing is a little corny. Megan McDonald relies far too heavily on pop culture references. The one aspect of the story I really liked, however, was the tape recorder. My sister, Julie, received a tape recorder for Christmas when she was around Julie's age. I can remember her, my other sister, my cousin and myself messing around with it just as Julie and Ivy did. Every once in a great while we dig out the tape she made that day and play back all the silliness. The most special part is when my grandpa is singing a Christmas song in German. He has been gone a long time now and it always brings us all to tears.

Maybe because I grew up at the exact same time as Julie, I am a stickler for some of the details. Some of the slang seems wrong. On page 11 after Julie is given the tape recorder, she says, "This is so boss!". Never in my childhood did I hear someone utter this phrase. Also, the illustration of Julie and Ivy on page 48 is not true to life for 9-year-olds. Teenagers, yes, but 9 and 10-year-olds did not dress like this in 1974. Little kids were just not this fashion conscious. I could see Tracy and her friends wearing these outfits, but not Julie and Ivy. And why is there such a long wait between basketball games? Three weeks? I'd think there'd be a game once a week.

Believe it or not, we had casts back in 1974. It was a big deal when everyone at school got to sign your cast. It would have been the perfect nuance to add to the story. I can't believe a broken bone would not require a cast. My niece broke her finger in the same fashion twice and had a cast both times. Also, a girl in my 5th grade class had her finger bent back and broken. Next day she came to school with, you guessed it, a cast on.

Usually the historical notes provide a little redemption when the story is not up to snuff, but good and bad here. Ah, the memories ditto copies stir. How we all loved taking a good whiff of the inky smell. Ha ha! But I have to disagree with the take on typing skills. Plenty of kids (especially girls) took typing in high school and we can actually type in a fast, proper manner without looking at the keys. The way kids type today might be different, but the old QWERTY method is still quite efficient. I also find it odd that the notes highlight San Francisco's need to end sports in school, yet Julie lives in San Francisco and plays on a FOURTH GRADE basketball team. Uh, how is that possible when the high schools had to cut sports? Strange.

I did like the ending of the story where Julie's family came together after she breaks her finger. I wish all kids who are dealing with divorce had parents who acted civilly toward one another.

[Sara]

This book starts with Julie ruminating about how much more difficult her new school is - she has lots more homework. Her old school she did fun things like read "Charlotte's Web" and work on crosswords. This reminded me of that one episode of "Modern Family" where Cam and Mitchell want to switch Lilly from her class with a stern teacher to a class that's more fun, but when Lily finds out they managed to do that she is horrified because one of her friends is in that class and she thinks 2+2 = 22. She tells them to get her back in her original class. LOL, that was hilarious.

I'm confused about what year it's supposed to be. Julie is from 1974, but it's obviously the fall of 1975 because Jaws is mentioned as "still playing" at the theaters and her sister saw it with a group of friends. That movie came out in 1975! They should have just made Julie be from 1975, but I think this was when they felt like they needed to have each other historical character be from a year ending in "4".

Julie gets a tape recorder and microphone from her dad to help her with her school project of having to interview her family. When her sister is talking on the phone to one of her friends (she takes the phone from the kitchen into her room...damn that must be a really long cord or her room to the kitchen isn't that far), Julie takes the microphone and lifts up the receiver of the phone in her mom's room and puts it next to it...and records her sister's conversation! Then she listens to it and finds out her sister has a boyfriend. Ooh, I would have smacked Julie! We also learn about Nixon and Watergate and Julie realizes maybe she shouldn't have invaded her sister's privacy.

I guess divorce was a bit of a stigma back in the '70s because Julie seems ashamed to tell anyone her parents are divorced, but when she gives her report she says the worst thing that ever happened to her was her parent's divorced. Ha, I remember reading the Baby-sitter Club books back in the late '80s and early '90's and half those girls' parents were divorced!

She has a pet rabbit named Nutmeg and he looks really adorable in one of the drawings we see of him. There's one outfit we see Julie in and it is absolutely hideous - she's wearing a purple cowl neck sweater with a belt (?) and purple and pink plaid pants that come up with above her ankle and she has argyle socks and clogs....girl, WTF are you wearing? Oh and let's not forget the purple beret and the patchwork denim bag with fringe. She makes Anna from "The O.C." look good (and I HATED Anna's look).

[Sophia]

This is my first time writing a review, but this mistake genuinely irritated me because it feels like it could have been avoided with the bare minimum of attention to detail. In Chapter 2, Tracy mentions holding a boy’s hand at the movie theater while they watch Jaws. Later, their mom says, “I didn’t think Jaws was still playing in theaters.” The issue is that Jaws the movie did not come out until June 20, 1975, while Julie’s story is clearly set in 1974.

What makes this even more frustrating is that there were multiple incredibly simple ways this could have been fixed. The author could have chosen any major movie actually released in 1974, when theaters were packed with hits like Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, or The Longest Yard. If Jaws was somehow essential to the scene, then the timeline could have been moved to later in 1975. Even referencing the Jaws novel instead of the movie would have worked perfectly, since the book came out in 1974.

Instead, this basic historical error somehow made it into an American Girl book released in 2007, decades after the 1970s and long after information like this became effortless to fact-check. That is what makes it feel especially careless. This is not some obscure historical period with difficult source material; it is one of the easiest American Girl eras to research because it revolves around mainstream American pop culture and major historical issues from the mid-1970s. These books were also meant to help young girls learn a little bit about American history, which makes basic timeline inaccuracies like this feel even more careless and disappointing.

As someone who loves Jaws, this immediately pulled me out of the story. The mistake is so obvious that it completely breaks immersion once you notice it. Honestly, Megan McDonald should probably stick to the Judy Moody books, because fumbling such an easily verifiable detail in a historical fiction series feels embarrassingly sloppy.

[Danielle T]

3.5 stars. Julie's school assignment is to tell "The Story of Your Life", which in addition to interviewing parents/siblings to see what they were like at age 10, includes describing the best and worst things to happen in your life. For Julie, the worst is her parents' divorce- but can she talk about that to the entire class??

A minor anomaly: at one point, Julie eavesdrops on her sister's phone conversation where Tracy describes going to see Jaws in a theater. Later, Tracy tells her mom & Julie about the movie and Mom is surprised that it's still in theaters. I looked, and it debuted summer of 1975... but this book takes place in 1974? Either we're collapsing the '70s together, or somehow a year has passed but given the biggest basketball game of the year is happening, we've still got to be in fall '74.

Overall though, not a bad book for middle grade looking for relatable historical fiction dealing in divorce.

[Ari Un-Fantôme]

The older sister is proving to be my favorite character of these books, as for most AG books. The story of this one was nice. I liked the whole but of Julie trying to decide what was the worst thing ever. I'm glad she finally stuck with her original idea. I could tell she was nervous and her going through with it shows a lot about her character. Tracy being upset at her dad was fair and I would've had a similar reaction. I'm surprised the dad didn't have an "I told you so" moment. It would be nice to know more of Tracy and the dad's relationship before the divorce. The AG website describes Tracy as "moody", but so far I haven't really seen that. The best I can think of is them arguing about who should do dishes, but I think both parties were being very reasonable. Julie was in the wrong about recording Tracy's conversation without her permission. Tracy doesn't deserve to have her privacy invaded like that.

[Dawn]

Read this with my seven year old (actually listened to the audio version) and really enjoyed it! She chose this doll to get for her birthday, so we were excited to read her story. Being a 70s girls myself, I am loving the trip down memory lane! I also am enjoying the story -- family wrestling with divorce, learning about the Chinese cultures through her friend Ivy, life in California back in the day, and a young girl standing up for herself and fighting to play on the boys' basketball team. I loved the part where Julie has to face her fears of talking about her family situation during a class assignment. She has an unusual family for the time, and she faces the truth in an admirable way. My daughters really like the story as well!

[Faith Marshall]

This, like the first book of its series, is not as brilliantly and thoughtfully written as other American Girl stories (at least, not according to someone having taken composition and reading classes in college); however, having enjoyed this as a little girl from the USA, I know that American girls will love it! As I turned the pages, I remembered laughing at this part here, or wishing to be like Julie there. Though the subjects of the Julie series, such as divorce, are not good, the messages American Girl conveys about them are.

[Anna]

It really bothers me how American Girl kept the 6 book collection for Julie, but DIDN'T keep with the similar titles as the others. For example, this book could have been easily called Julie Learns a Lesson. She learned like at least 3 lessons in this book. Why they changed the titles for Julie, I don't know, but I HATE IT. However, This book was a lot better than the first one. It was a lot more interesting than the first one and I absolutely LOVED the ending. It actually made me cry because divorced kid here and whew, what Julie said at the end really hit home.

[Emily]

I didn't learn much in the story itself. They mention watergate but that's about it. For the most part it's about her parents divorce and the basketball game. Minus the tape recorder it felt like a modern day story. But I did like the looking back section. It was fun to imagine what school was like for my mom.

[Karol]

Oh, the memories Julie's story brought back to me. The telephone with the long twisty cord, the tape recorder, my friend arguing with her sister about whose turn it was to set the table or wash the dishes, divorced living arrangements and relationships.
A well written story showing pieces of the 70's through family relations, education, school sports and merchandise from Julie's Mom's shop.

[Jamie (TheRebelliousReader)]

4 stars. I really liked this one. Julie’s school project is to interview her family and then tell about the best moment in her life and the worst. The journey she went through to finally be able to tell her class about her parents divorce was really good. She’s a very wise kid and I’m really enjoying this series so far.

[Elizabeth]

I liked the girls discussions of the changes a divorce brought, without any specifics, because it loses something when you get too specific. Helpful for families working out difficulties. Worst and best days can change with perspective too.

[Katie Young]

This series is shaping up to be a fave. The setting has this nostalgia for me from my knowledge of Haight-Ashbury and of my mother's childhood, but more than that the writing is good. The characters are solid, well-developed individuals and the plot proceeds well with solid themes and ideas.