80s-90s preteen series fic; mismatched gal pals; tough girl Roxie or Randi w/ black spiky hair; pink

Last one to catalog!

The book definitely was the start of a Scholastic or Apple preteen girls' series, and it was a 5x7 'preteen' paperback. There were 4-5 girls who were friends and they each had different one-note personalities: smart, shy, funny, etc. The cover is pink and shows the girls standing in a group. The tough girl in the bunch, whose name is Roxie or Randi, is on the right, and her hair is black and spiky (and possibly includes a mullet). She is wearing a baggy sweater and baggy pants.

Contents-wise, I don't remember whether or not the tough girl moves to the neighborhood and joins the group, but I think the plot revolves around her in some way.

Ironically, I remembered reading the book when I was searching for an answer to a Name That Book query. I stumbled across a photo of the book, thought "I need to catalog that on LT," and then promptly forgot both the title and the author. The photo of the book was on one of the cliqueypizza blogs, but I haven't been able to find it again.

Book found: Peacharino from Cliquey Pizza responded to my enquiry on her blog. The series is Girl Talk, by L. E. Blair, and this particular book is Welcome to Junior High!.

Wikipedia tells me L. E. Blair is a pseudonym for K. A. Applegate, whose Animorphs and Everworld books I have not read.

Huzzah; a found book!

>3 MyriadBooks: Extra huzzah because this board has been so quiet lately! (Although it's a bit irritating to have answered several inquiries lately and had no response from the OPs.)

Animorphs is surprisingly good. I recommend the series to kids of Buffy/Walking Dead fans, or kids who's parents don't like them reading the Goosebumps series. :)

>5 RowanTribe: My curiosity is piqued: Why do some parents dislike the Goosebumps series? I've not read any, but I read a bunch of R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike books when I was in junior high. I don't remember anything objectionable about them, except, perhaps, the formulaic writing (which I didn't mind then!).

That's mostly it. A lot of parents are of the impression that reading "trash" (ie - not "literature") will rot their kids' brains, and for better or worse, Goosebumps is the classic poster child for that particular qualm. With them I can point to something like Animorphs or the Star Wars books as a compromise series - kids still like it, and parents feel like it's slightly better "quality" reading material.

I will also say that the overt horror-style in Goosebumps don't help in making parents feel better either, but I think that is partly regional (I'm in the southern USA, in the Bible Belt.) Creepy alien invaders are somehow more palatable than demons/ghosts/mummies/zombies/oozes. Not sure why, but there it is.

(I feel like I should mention that I'm a librarian, and I do a lot of book recommending and parent-fear-calming regarding juvenile/YA books.)

I second the Animorphs recommendation, though they are mostly tossed away by now. My daughter read almost the entire series, so of course I had to check them out. Applegate did a good job of describing the inner life of the animals - sensations, fears, instincts, etc. I thought it was a very good way to introduce children to thinking outside of themselves.

>7 RowanTribe: Makes sense. I think it's easier to dive into the dregs infrequently than it is to go from reading nothing but Nora Roberts to reading Jane Austen. I'm glad I had my Illustrated Classics while growing up, and my mom's poetry books, and my dad's history books, or I might still be stuck in my thriller rut. (But I do enjoy a good spine-tingler now and then.)

Re: the horror element, that reminds me of a review I was reading here on LT. I can't remember the book's title or the author, but he's a vocal, anti-Harry Potter theologian. He wrote a children's lit crit book that basically says magic can never be good because it is contra Christianity. Yet he's a huge LotR fan and sanctions that because Tolkien was a Christian and Gandalf's magic in LotR is for the greater good.

Many of the evangelical movements in American Christianity contain strands of this medieval-era theology (graphic visualizations of the devil's earthly form, etc)--so does LotR--so, while I disagree with his interpretation, I find it interesting. Wish I could remember the name of the book!

I also think sci fi can uphold systemic prejudice. Too often, it's a story about self vs other (us vs them). I can see it being more acceptable in an evangelical-leaning region to view alien stories as okay (because the aliens aren't magic, they're foreign) and monster stories as not (because they involve dark arts).

(NB: Even though I live north of the Mason-Dixon line, I'm not saying that this attitude is prevalent because it's the Deep South. Just that an evangelical theology, coupled with a more entrenched systemic prejudice, could make a conflation likely. But there are systemic prejudices and evangelical movements all over America.)

Edited: touchstone difficulties

>8 2wonderY: Interesting; I like authors who can explore the interior lives of mammals. Perhaps Applegate is an animal lover? Her latest book, The One and Only Ivan, is about a zoo-kept gorilla, and it's told from his POV. I recently skimmed it at the library, and it looks very well done. It won the Newberry. The TBR pile keeps growing.

>9 LibraryPerilous:
Could you be thinking of Michael O'Brien's A Landscape With Dragons?

I summarized the book in my head as "Don't mess with my paradigms." In O'Brien's world, the dragon is always meant to symbolize Satan. Any attempt to make the dragon a rounded or good character is heretical. I disagree with him, but I thought the book interesting.

11> Yes, that's it. Thanks; I've added it to my TBR pile. I was interested because I like my dragons friendly. Also, an LT member, mrtall, wrote a compelling review. I do not share either the member's or the author's views, but I suspect that I would have a strong reaction to the book and, thus, would like to read it.