Junior

Class of '88 #3

by Linda A. Cooney

Nick, Sean, Celia, Allie, and Meg, all have doubts about dating and their future goals

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction

Paperback

First published October 1, 1987

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an effort to review books that I've read in the past four years, but haven't reviewed I'm digging into my Goodreads archive and hacking away at it. If we're lucky, I'll be all caught up with the reviews by the end of the year. I'll be sure to put the year I read it in parenthesis in the title.

Here's a gem, that I've had sitting in the queue waiting to be finished up.

I've been reading With Rigor for All: Meeting Common Core Standards for Reading Literature. I feel like I could've written the book (if I'd ever had my act together) as Jago says things that I either do in my classroom or believe. In one of these instances she talks about the importance of reading literature true, but she also talks about the joys of re-reading.

One of my favorite quotes:
"Books ask readers to look inward, to examine our beliefs in light of new information, to consider the world through different eyes, to take time for reverie and reflection."
After reading that don't you want to just reread every book you've ever read as just the act of reading has made you look at the themes, characters and life in generally differently.
I'm looking at this series in two ways 1] as a piece of nostalgia and 2] as a how-to manual of sorts. I'll be talking about each book in this manner.

Class of '88 Sophomore
The Story
Allie comes back from New York full of piss and vinegar. I didn't care much for Allie's character from this point on. It's also during this book that Celia begins to show the worst of her true back-stabbing colors. Um, everything is out of whack, the guy that Allie is seeing starts seeing that chick from the Class of '89 series, Nick is dating Darcy and Meg is trying to be cool and popular and smart. The only good thing is that Sean gets a girl and Brooke is just lovely.

As A Piece of Nostalgia
Until this last year I didn't really care for this book much. Rereading it now, I realized that your Junior year is the hardest. Frankly, year three of anything is the hardest. But, your Junior year of high school is when you can't really be a kid anymore, but you aren't really an adult and oh, all of the decisions!

As A How to Manual
I've learned...er...remember that Juniors have a lot of crap going on and coming to class is only one of those things.

I'm not sure that Celia grew up to be all that nice.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forgot about the story in this one and how Allie changes and her friends do not like the new her. And made me think, these people shunned purple streaks in hair and dressing in all black and I remember thinking, WHY? That sounds COOL! And that's totally how I am NOW 22 years after I read it the first time. ha! Take that, high school people!

[Reading with Cats · Rating 2 out of 5]

Huh...well, *that* was a thoroughly unpleasant group of people. Except for Brooke. She was awesome.

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many great memories wrapped up in this book. The best and worst parts of being a teenager and all of the emotions of dealing with the growing, the changes, the newness, the hormones, the loneliness. Being a teenager is hard work! How the heck did any of us make it through all of those years? Thank god for good friends!

[Olivia Schroeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was pretty good I liked reading it!