This one comes closer than Just as Long as We're Together to the Judy Blume I remember.

Rachel Robinson is the tallest girl in her class, a gifted student taking advance classes, on the debate team and an aspiring musician. Her mom's a trial lawyer who has just been appointed a judge, and her father is a lawyer-turned-teacher. She's the youngest of three and a very serious girl who compulsively cleans her room, her closet and her drawers when she's stressed.

To those around her she's extremely competent and intelligent, so naturally she's offered places in special programs: social, academic, theatrical and her friends want her to run for class president.

Judy Blume has perfectly captured the duck-on-the-pond teen: calm, cool and collected on the surface but underneath a boiling, churning, furious paddling to keep it all together. Her family life is far from tranquil and the worse things get at home, the harder she tries to control her immediate surroundings.

If this book were written today, there'd naturally be a semi-catastrophic climax to the story; something allowing Rachel to shatter and put herself back together into a healthier, better adjusted self. But that's not real life and Blume does real life, even if it makes for slightly less exciting reading. There are small, pivotal moments throughout the story; tiny releases of pressure here and there, that aren't magical fixes for anything. Rachel moves along, grows up, discovers that she continues to wake up each morning and the world continues to turn.

If Blume did anything for her readers it was sharing with them the knowledge that they aren't alone in their experiences, their feelings, or their angst. She may not do riveting yarns, but she does comfort better than anyone. ( )

I’m consistently surprised by how there seems to be a Blume book for every type of kid/young adult out there. This one is geared towards those kids who are a little bit more mature and stress out a lot about being perfect and successful and overexert themselves. This book follows Rachel through trying to have a normal life while also dealing with a brother who has been expelled from boarding school and continuously antagonizes her.

The thing I loved most about this book is that Rachel is completely dreading her brother being home, and while he has his issues, she still learns a lot from him; she learns how to take it easy once in a while and blow some steam, something that she clearly isn’t good at, because the stress comes out when she grinds her teeth at night. This book also tackles some difficult family issues, like having a sibling who is having a tough time, or even Rachel’s cousin, who is struggling to go to school while being a single mom and trying to support herself and her child.

This book does a good job in being timeless; the problems in this are ones that are going to be faced by teens all the time: crushes, acne, siblings, grades, etc. It’s a quick read and stars a main character that feels genuine in her struggles and desires.

Also posted on Purple People Readers. ( )

Companion to "Just as Long as We're Together". Rachel's a straight-A student, on every teacher's wish list for Natural Helpers. She practices the flute 45 minutes a day. But she grinds her teeth at night and dreads dinnertime now that her troublemaker brother, Charles, has been expelled from boarding school and is back home, acting up to get attention from Rachel's parents.

I read this in fifth grade and absolutely hated the inclusion of the f-word.

Narrated by Mandy Siegfried. ( )