Dotty's Suitcase

by Constance C. Greene

I'm Lucy Rose, and here's the thing about 4th: that grade is busy like you can't believe! Especially if you are a person who is already PLENTY busy on account of having RESPONSIBILITIES and I am that kind exactly. I am already collecting a vocabulary, plus I have to think up new palindromes and now I have to do the most P-U thing which is the MULTIPLICATION tables, which I would say is a thing I hate, if I was allowed to say hate, which I am not.
PLUS I have to do the greatest thing and that is be in the play of Annie and I'm sure I will get to be Annie because 1. I have red hair and 2. if I don't I will absolutely perish to death.
PLUS there is another thing I have to do absolutely constantly and that is what my mom calls eavesdropping but I call LISTENING VERY QUIETLY SO I CAN KNOW THINGS. But that turns out to be halfway sickening because now I know a thing about my mom and it's that she has a FRIEND that is a MAN and I think they are having DATES. That makes me feel like I'm horrified to pieces and part of me doesn't want to know a single more thing but the other part does because how else can I figure out how to keep those 2 apart?
And here is the thing about that: it can make a girl exhausted.

147 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 1980

About the author

Born on October 27th, 1924, Constance C. Greene, the daughter of newspaper reporters, published A Girl Called Al (Viking, 1969) the story about a very intelligent girl who is an under-achiever and latch key kid, although Greene says that at the time of the writing the term wasn't being used yet. Al was a likable character and other books followed.

One of Greene's most popular books, Beat the Turtle Drum (Viking 1976), came from personal experience. At the age of eleven, Greene's sister died. The story relates how a young girl learns to cope with the accidental death of her sister. The book was adapted for television in 1976 as Very Good Friends and was shown on the ABC After-school Special.

Greene also wrote other juvenile and adult novels, among them Nora: Maybe a Ghost Story and Isabelle the Itch.

—Leslie Greaves Radloff

Reviews

[Faye · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main character was selfish and couldn't make up her mind. She was constantly bossing around the only other kind that would even so much ans hang out with her.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

An adequate early-80s children's book that could have been SO much better with a better writer, or at least an agressive editor.