Laura Cooper Rendina

Debbie Jones - whose story began in Roommates, and then continued in the eponymous Debbie Jones, both of which focused on her experiences at the Pine Ridge School for Girls; before progressing through a Summer for Two, which detailed her time spent on Cape Cod, the season before her senior year - confronts her post-high school life in this fourth and final installment of Laura Cooper Rendina's series of teen novels, published from 1948 through 1955. Still reeling from the tragic and utterly unexpected death of mother and wife earlier that spring, the Jones family finds itself fraying at the edges in My Love for One, with older siblings Elspeth and Phil both married and moved away, Mr. Jones quiet and withdrawn, younger sister Polly determined to be a martyr to grief, and younger brother Jimmie needing lots of love and attention. As for Debbie herself, she finds that her efforts at home-making, for her father and younger siblings, are far from a success, and that her first job, out in the big world, doesn't lead her in quite the direction she had hoped to go...

Like Summer for Two, I can't say that I was particularly impressed with My Love for One, although I am certainly happy to have finished out the 'Debbie Jones' series - I try to curb the impulse, but there's no denying that I can be a bit of a completist - and did find it rather interesting. The depiction of the garment factory where Debbie finds work as an 'undercover agent' seemed hopelessly idealized to me - color me cynical, but were factory owners really hiring women to ferret out all the minor ways in which their employees might be unhappy, on the job? - and her relationship with Ned Smith, factory-office manager, rather unconvincing. I usually abhor the "team this" or "team that" approach to young adult literature, but somehow I expected that she would end up with long-time friend and neighbor, Peter, a result I would have found far more believable and satisfying. As it was, the romance with Ned felt forced, and almost like an afterthought. I also found the entire sub-plot involving family friend and general hired man Gus, in which he departs Massachusetts to become a truck driver in the west, in order to spare Polly the degradation of becoming too enamored with somebody 'like him' distastefully classist, even though (ironically), I think Rendina way trying to be broad-minded, in her way.

Very much a product of their time, these Debbie Jones books have been interesting to read (particularly the first two, given my newfound interest in the school story genre), but I don't know to whom I would recommend them. They're a little too dated for contemporary young readers, so probably to adult readers with an interest in vintage children's fare - particularly children's and teen novels from the 1940s and 1950s. 'Malt Shop Novels,' I think some people call them...?… (meer)

Debbie Jones and Rachele Newman, the friends and boarding school roommates introduced in Laura Cooper Rendina's Roommates, return in this third installment of the Debbie Jones series, each spending the summer, in their different ways, on Cape Cod. Determined to earn some money, and to help her family pay for her senior year at Pine Ridge School, Debbie takes a job as a waitress at The Manse, an old-fashioned Victorian hotel and restaurant run by an old friend of her mother's; while Rachele, newly returned from her year studying art in Europe, and desperately hurt by her quarrel with Phil (Debbie's brother), goes to stay with her socialite mother and her new husband, and spends her days at the local yacht club. Unable to contact one another - Debbie having lost Rachele's address, and Rachele not knowing Debbie's - the two friends are each unhappy in their own ways, until a surprise encounter begins the ball rolling toward the day when all will be well...

Although it provided pleasant enough of a reading experience, I cannot say that I enjoyed Summer for Two quite as much as Roommates or Debbie Jones, probably because it was missing the school setting of those earlier books - something which drew me to Rendina's series in the first place. There were moments I appreciated - most particularly, the scene in which Rachele realizes just who Harry Devereaux really is, after seeing his dehumanizing snobbery directed at someone (Debbie) for whom she genuinely cares - but having finished it, I do not think I will ever want to pick it up again. Which, since my Inter-Library-Loan copy of it came from the Cincinnati Public Library - as always, my hats off to you, oh librarians! - is probably just as well. Still, despite my lukewarm reaction to this one, I do plan to track down the fourth and final title, My Love for One, to see how it all ends.… (meer)

Debbie Jones returns to Pine Ridge in this eponymous second adventure, but things are very different from her previous year at the girls' boarding school. Now a junior and an upperclassman - she was a sophomore and a new girl in Roommates, which told the story of her relationship with fellow new girl Rachele Newman - she is full of plans for the year, from trying out for the play, to writing for the school magazine, The Echo. But, as if so often the case, things don't go quite as planned. With Rachele away studying in France, Debbie's favorite teacher, English instructor Mr. Bingham (fondly nicknamed "Bingie"), off teaching at the nearby university this year, and a new roommate, in the form of moody Mary Shelley Weaver, Debbie is soon distracted by personal concerns, and gets badly off-track. Rushing along from one crisis to the next - she almost misses the deadline for the essay contest, for Youth Forum, and then almost misses an important award ceremony, in her honor - her mind is always on other things: how can she help Shelley? Is she in love with Bingie? Or with Peter, a young boy her own age, that she meets on a weekend home? Most of all, what does it meant to grow up, and will it ever happen...?

I found Debbie Jones a bit of a let-down, and wavered, in my star rating, between two and three stars. It had some of the same flaws as Roommates, most notably in its self-conscious effort to get into the mind of "young people." All those scenes where Debbie is mooning about, thinking about growing up, and what it means, felt a little overdone to me. Yes, adolescence is a time for high melodrama (and yes, Romeo and Juliet makes a brief appearance, as if to confirm this), but somehow the melodrama in Rendina's narrative just didn't feel like the "right" kind to me - something was off. The dual perspective of the first book, which relates events from both Rachele and Debbie's perspectives, is missing here, and that too may have contributed to my feeling that, despite the title, there was a little too much Debbie Jones here. Still, despite these issues, this was a quick and mostly enjoyable read (even though I didn't think it very good), so I eventually settled on three stars. Recommended to anyone interested in American school stories, that has read the first book about Debbie Jones, or to anyone interested in 1940s/50s American teen novels.… (meer)

Sophomores and roommates Debbie Jones and Rachele Newman, both new girls at the Pine Ridge School, were as different as two students could be. One, Debbie, was the middle child of a large and loving family, and an open and enthusiastic (though sometimes difficult) girl with a good heart; while the other, Rachele, was the only child of divorced parents, had been educated at home by her famous author-father, and possessed a dignified reserve that sometimes put others off. Where Debbie was "magnificently proportioned," tall and blond, with an air of self confidence, Rachele was petite, small and brunette, with an elegant loveliness of her own. Where Debbie was rather loud, and quite messy, Rachele was quiet, and liked to have everything in its place. In short, as much as it was possible for two beautiful girls with intelligence and good hearts to be complete opposites, they were.

Naturally, in these circumstances, being assigned to the same room did not go well, at first. Debbie, disappointed at not having a roommate to adore, gravitated toward the popular Fran, with her lighthearted way of making everything seem fun; while Rachele, despite her promises to her father, shut herself away from all the other girls, and most especially her roommate, whom she found superficial and rude. The slow process, involving many missteps and misunderstandings, whereby both girls learned that the other was not what she seemed, makes up the bulk of the story, in Laura Cooper Rendina's Roommates, which also sees Rachele gaining some much-needed perspective on both of her parents, and her relationships with them, and Debbie, after many false starts, finally finding something (writing) about which she truly care.

On a certain level, I found myself enjoying this boarding school tale, first published in 1948, and the first of four books featuring Debbie Jones - subsequent titles include: Debbie Jones, Summer for Two and My Love for One - that Rendina penned. Some classic school story motifs are here, from the initial false friend whose duplicity is eventually discovered by the heroine, to the sneaking out at night (for a coke at the local drugstore, in this case, rather than for a midnight feast). Other school-story themes, by contrast, such as the girl who will not tell on her fellows, whatever the circumstances, are noticeably absent here, as Rendina pins an important plot resolution on Debbie helping a young girl come forward to clear her name (and by extension, cast the blame on the rightful party).

The author has a good sense of her two main characters, and how they think, capturing the mercurial changes in their perceptions of the people around them, and the accompanying emotional turmoil that this provokes in them. On the other hand, sometimes the language itself felt a little overly dramatic, as if Rendina were trying just a little too hard to capture that sense of adolescent angst. Also, the sub-plot in which Rachele and Phil, Debbie's older brother, fall in love at first glance, was unconvincing and rather creepy. After all, Phil is an ex-soldier (a member of a bazooka team in WWII), and a college student at Harvard, while Rachele is a high school sophomore. I know "serious" romances started younger, in previous generations, but this seemed to be pushing it a bit... Leaving aside these issues, I did enjoy this for what it was - an American boarding school story, and a late 1940s, early 1950s style teen novel - and will most likely continue to read the series, to see how the character of Debbie Jones develops.… (meer)