Thursday, April 01, 2010

The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. by Kate Messner

brilliant Gianna Z. is good at a lot of things: helping her grandmother find where she left her false teeth (in the vegetable crisper), posting the fastest times at cross-country meets, figuring out what dogs people would be if they were dogs (the mean girls at school –pit bull/bloodhound mix), dreaming up really cool art projects.  Unfortunately, she isn’t good at deadlines or schoolwork.  She especially has trouble with big projects with lots of little deadlines.  It doesn’t usually get her down, but now her science grade might stand in the way of her running in the cross-country sectionals, and it doesn’t help that the mean girls break into her gym locker and trash the part of her project she has finished.  As if that’s not bad enough, Gianna’s beloved Nonna seems to be slipping away from her, and her mom is too caught up in her busy schedule to even show up at Nonna’s doctor appointment.   Luckily she has a great best friend, Zig, who seems to always understand what she needs help with.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that Gianna’s dad is a mortician and sometimes has to drop her off at school in the hearse.  Great fodder for the mean girls.  I absolutely love this book.  It’s my favorite combination of funny and sad.  Review by Stacy Church

No comments: