Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Greenwald, Lisa. Sweet Treats & Secret Crushes

Greenwald, Lisa Sweet Treats & Secret Crushes
Amulet see Abrams, Harry 2010 291p 16.95
978-0-8109-8990-0 elm/ms friendship VG


Forced to be creative on their snow day while cooped inside their Brooklyn apartment building, Kate, Georgia and Olivia decide to deliver fortune cookies to bring out the love they know is around their building!
With wholesome characters, plots and language, Lisa Greenwald writes a good book for the preteen. In Sweet Treats & Secret Crushes, she combines 3 delightful 12-year olds with a snowstorm, sets them in a large, old apartment building in Brooklyn with a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor and ends up with a book that is sure to please the young female audience. With the aid of Georgia’s parents, the girls bake fortune cookies and decide to deliver them to everyone in their building. What they discover along the way is an interesting cast of characters, a novel way to bring everyone together and boys. As the girls deliver their fortunes, they meet Crying Girl, whose relationship has just broken up, law students who are studying at the local Brooklyn law school, flower lady who delivers flowers to cheer up strangers, and boys. They are delighted that many of the fortunes that they deliver seem to be coming true! With the bounty of Chinese food which has been prepared for Valentine’s Day by Georgia’s parents, the apartment dwellers come together for a big party, and there, they find new relationships. Greenwald presents the plot through the perspective of the 3 girls, and she captures the voice and relationships of a 12-year old. She creatively begins each chapter with a fortune, and the young reader will have fun seeing how the chapter’s content revolves around that fortune. All young girls have been forced to evaluate their friendships, and all young girls have crushes that seem to be all-encompassing. Greenwald has creatively woven both themes together. Realistic Fiction Squaresky, Martha

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