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Summary: Lovely Reading
Review: Joy School has a wonderful flow and explores themes of losses, loves, and friendships of different kinds. Some reviews describe it as a book about first love -- first love is simply one facet. The voice of Katie is true. You will feel her heartbreak and joys within yourself. She is a character that you will think about for days before she starts to fade away. Also Cherylanne and the father. I am so happy to see that there is a sequel out this month! "Durable Goods" (the first in the series) was edgier. Definitely start there.
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Summary: more Katie!
Review: After reading this book, I was hoping that there would be another book written about Katie. I am so glad to find out that there is! I really enjoy reading about her since she reminds me so much of myself growing up living in daydreams...saying one thing while meaning another. I have quickly become an Elizabeth Berg fan and it's too bad that I didn't discover her sooner!
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Summary: Themes that apply to everyone. love. death. friends. family.
Review: Underneath actions and feeling, there is a truth which Elizabeth Berg seems to grasp so easily. It's so honest. If I were in Katie's place, I know I would have done the same things she did.
The characters are so familiar, and there's one of them in every town. I know I can name a person with the same personality as the characters in this book. Can you?
-Katie, the heroine. No, she does not go arund saving people and being Wonderwoman, but she does save herself from some dangerous situations, which to me makes her a heroine. She the type of person we all hope we are.
- Cherylanne was Katie's best friend before she moved. Cherylanne is 2 years older then Katie (who's 12)and is the popular girl who we all secretly envy. You can sense Cherylanne's character easily even though their only communication is through letters.
-Jimmy is Katie's dream man. Yes, man, not boy. Katie is ice skating one day and she slips through thin ice, and this man named Jimmy who is the manager of a garage station saves her. She falls instantly in love with him. He's handsome, and is so friendly to her. The problem is: he's 23, she's 12, almost 13 (she tells him she's 15, though)and he happens to be married and have a 5 year old son. They're not a perfect couple.
-Cynthia, Katie's first friend in her new town. She's one of those people that you are only friends with because you don't have anyone else. She's 12 also, but acts way younger. On their first playdate, they play the Barbie game. She's temporary, Katie hopes.
-Katie's mom is... dead.
-Katie's dad isn't all that friendly. He never talks, is very distant, and has been since her mom's death. The relationship between them is disturbing.
-One last character. Taylor Sinn. They say no one's perfect. Now that Taylor's in the world, they are going to have to make an exception. She's gorgeous, she models, she's brilliant, she's popular, she's funny, she also shoplifts. Katie is honored to be her friend. Did I mention she's also not that trustworthy?
The interesting characters keep on coming. You will be sorry if you miss out on this book!
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Summary: Growing up the life Katie does isn't easy.
Review: Katie is back and this time she is in Missouri with her dad. This time she having a tough time adjusting to being in a new place and meeting people.Katie first starts a friendship with Cynthia. Cynthia lives with my family and her mother is nut case. Always telling the girls how things should be done and how she does them. While hanging out with Cynthia, Katie meets Cynthia's grandmother Nona who is an old italian lady who takes to Katie right away. Katie always falls in love with the guy at the gas station. Jimmy is who Katie is really in love with and would do anything to be with him, but he isn't intersted in Katie in the way that Katie would like him to be. Katie always starts a friendship with a troubled girl named Taylor who is smart but doesn't always do the best things. From the way Berg pulls together this book from the way the charactors all interacte and how her father has grown up some. Makes this a book that isn't easy to forget.
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Summary: Berg knows what makes good reading....
Review: She doesn't waste your time. She writes a great story. It is so easy & fun to read. It's hard not to get hooked on her.
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Summary: First big crush
Review: This book is the sequel to Durable Goods- a very enjoyable book, but I think this one may be even better. Berg absolutely captures exactly what it is like to be a early-teenage girl with her first big crush. The totally endearing Katie- innocent, yet so perceptive- has her heart broken by a much older guy, Jimmy, and reflects, "I have been on this earth long enough to know how hard it is to find all that in a man and I know I will never find it again"- who hasn't been there? Poor Katie is just so easy to relate to. And Jimmy, the object of her affection- is so likeable in his own right. After all, he didn't need to come down to the lake to clear the air with Katie the day before he moved. Sure, perhaps he should have known that she was developing a crush on him, but it seemed like he was preoccupied with troubles of his own. Perhaps I liked him most of all because he so easily could have taken advantage of Katie, but didn't. The book is actually full of well drawn characters- from Katie and Jimmy to the minor supporting ones, like the hilarious quirky Nona. Enjoy! There's just not much not to like here.
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Summary: Joy school or sorrowful??
Review: Joy School is a story about a 12-going-on-13-year-old girl, Katie, learning about life and love. She moves from Texas to Missouri with her father after her mother's death. She tells us about her experience in a new school, finding new friends and trying to fit in. She describes what her life is like and what her daily routine schedule is. Her whole life changes when she sees Jimmy, a 23-year-old married man. She falls in love with him. The age difference and the fact that Jimmy is married do not stop her love for him from growing. In the meantime, Katie writes to Cherylanne, her best friend in Texas, tells Cynthia and Taylor, her friends at her new school, that Jimmy is her boyfriend. Jimmy likes Katie as a "little friend." She keeps on making up stories in her mind about how he does not get along with his wife and how he is not happy with her, but she is shocked when he tells her that he is leaving to go to Ohio. All of her dreams are destroyed and she is lonely and sad again.
This is a good book to read if somebody is interested in an adolescent experiencing first love. First I thought it was going to be slow and boring, but the more you read, the more interesting it gets.
I think it is an excellent book, which describes a short period of Katie's life in detail and makes the reader live the story and get so close to the character, Katie, and even feel her sadness at the end of the novel, when Jimmy leaves. It also makes you realize that the hardest period of life was the adolescence and you will be happy that you passed that period of your life.
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Summary: Great Book For Female Teens
Review: Joy School would be a great book to read, if you are a female teen. Elizabeth Berg wrote this book mainly for female teenagers attending high school. The recommendation of this book would be more towards females than males because Berg describes everything in detail and most female teenagers can easily relate to some events that take place in this book. I would have to honestly say the only reason that I wasn't totally into this book was beacuse Berg was telling a story about a girl and her troubles with the crush of her life and her friends. Other than that I would have to say that this book would lure female teens because it would make them engage into what is going on in the book.
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Summary: I read both of her books back to back
Review: first I read Durable Goods, it was like part of my life on pages. Then I read Joy School, I absolutely loved it. There was so much truth of growing up in there. It was so funny. I recommend this author to anyone who loves to read. Ellen
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Summary: Joy School/English9
Review: Elizabeth Berg's novel Joy School is a hilarious, but heartbreaking story of a young girls first love. Thirteen-year-old Katie is new to her Missouri town, living alone with her stern father after her mother's death. Trying desperately to fit in at school, Katie makes new friends wherever she can. Katie first makes friends with her new housekeeper, Ginger. Then there is a misfit named Cynthia, with the almost too perfect mother, and then finally the beautiful Taylor; a young model who gets her kicks out of shoplifting. But the most frustrating of Katie's new friendships is that of the very handsome, twenty-three-year-old gas station tenant, Jimmy. This is the first person to really capture Katie's heart.
Berg's Joy School takes place in a small Missouri town in the late 50's and early 60's, where the adolescent army brat, Katie, desperately tries to find her place in life. It is in the small town where Katie finds her first love. It is the first extremely cold day in November, and everything is frozen, including the little pond a couple of blocks away from Katie's house. So, she decides to go ice-skating. While skating on the little pond hidden behind the Mobil Gas Station, she hits a thin part in the ice, and falls through. Luckily, it only goes up to her waste, but the water is so cold, that she can hardly move.
She finally gets out, and walks into the gas station, frozen, and looking for warmth and help. This is where she first meets the first love in her life.
Katie soon finds a couple of new friends in school, and also pursues a relationship with this Jimmy character. She finds that he has her passion for the simple game of checkers, poetry, and reading. She becomes great friends with the beautiful girl Taylor, who has charm enough to make Katie's dad laugh, the absolutely impossible task, and who also teaches Katie a few things about boys, and takes Katie's on her first date. She also finds another unusual friendship with a fellow misfit, who has the coolest grandmother, and the almost too perfect mother, who Katie can't stand.
Throughout the book, Katie grows as a person, and as an adult too. She learns new things with every step she takes. She learns how life isn't always fair, and how good friends are worth pursuing. Katie captures your heart as she takes you on a wild ride through a thirteen-year-old girls life, who finds herself in love, and it all takes place in a point of view that even the simplest of minds could understand.
I completely recommend this book to anyone who likes stories that seem real, and can capture your heart because of it. I loved this book, and even before you read Joy School, take a look at the book Katie first appeared in, Durable Goods. The way Berg writes is completely incredible, she knows how to take simplest of words, and mix them together, to make a flowing, and interesting yet, easy- to-understand novel. Just the way Berg describes Katie's teachers is reason enough to buy this wonderful and delighting book Joy School.
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