Author Archives: mondomolly

How Do You Lose Those Ninth Grade Blues? By Barthe DeClements

Posted on August 5, 2017

Will Elsie be able to accept her (beautiful!) new self? This is the first of two (sadly out-of-print) books following up on the life of Elsie Edwards from Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade, the school fatty with a horrifying mother … Continue reading →

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Barbie and Ken By Cynthia Lawrence and Bette Lou Maybee

Posted on July 28, 2017

How these popular high school classmates solve their dilemmas makes for many hours of entertaining reading! Upon her introduction in 1959, Mattel’s Barbie doll was intended to be something of a blank slate: a glamorous avatar on which girls could … Continue reading →

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Checking In With The Imaginary Summer Book Club: Up The Down Staircase By Bel Kaufman

Posted on July 15, 2017

(Click here for information on the 2017 edition of Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature. As all of the four selected titles have filmed adaptations, we will be looking at the movie versions as we go along. … Continue reading →

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Promised Kiss (First Love From Silhouette #14) By Veronica Ladd

Posted on June 30, 2017

All her friends think Roger is weird, but Karen knows better… Background: 236 First Love titles were published between 1981 and 1987 by Silhouette, “AMERICA’S publisher of Contemporary Romance” (distinguishing itself from its main competitor, the Canadian-based Harlequin, which would fold Silhouette … Continue reading →

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Magazine Madness and/or Mania: Co-Ed, May 1963

Posted on June 24, 2017

Published by Scholastic between 1959 and 1985, Co-Ed’s somewhat confusing tagline was “The High School Magazine For Homemakers and Career Girls”, which covers pretty much every group of young women except collegiate co-eds.

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Robin West: Nurse’s Aide By Louise Christopher

Posted on June 16, 2017

The pretty nurse’s aide becomes involved in the strange life of a beautiful debutante… It’s easy to see why nurse books were so popular amongst young, female readers of the 20th century: nurses got to actually do things: live away … Continue reading →

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Prank By Kathryn Lasky

Posted on June 3, 2017

How can the words of the past give Birdie hope for the future? Well, this another one where the cover-copy barely matches the actual content of the book: it’s sold to readers as being about a high school student who … Continue reading →

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