Miss Smithers. Susan Juby. Toronto, ON: HarperCollins, 2004. 277 pp., pbk., $15.99. ISBN 0-00-639265-2. Grades 8 and up / Ages 13 and up. Review by Jocelyn A. Dimm. *** /4 Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.

excerpt:

Besides the Miss Smithers Pageant, in spite of what my mother might think, isn't really a beauty contest. Oh sure, everybody looks presentable enough. I mean, nobody's totally hideous or anything. From what I can tell, it's more how good you are than how good you look. You have to be the right kind of good, too churchgoing but not aiming for the priesthood, nice but not a brownnoser. The contest has about six hundred events and is just vague enough for every girl in town to figure she's got a shot at the title if she can just figure out what it means to be a good girl.

Susan Juby has followed up Alice, I Think with another entertaining collection of diary entries by Alice McLeod. Alice, now sixteen, contemplates the details of being a contestant for the Miss Smithers Pageant in Smithers, BC. Between hair appointments, wardrobe planning, and special appearances at town events for the pageant, Alice deals with the trials of her personal life. Should she sleep with her boyfriend or wait to have sex until after she is married? Should she buy an entire wardrobe of second-hand gems from the Thrift store or spend $400.00 of pageant allowance on a pair of leather pants?

     Alice's life is a complicated collage of, what her counselor might refer to as, "challenging choices." As her ex-hippie father tries to resurrect his old folk band and her ex-hippie mother heads off to activist training camp, Alice continues with her own quest for the "almost normal" life. Furthering her plans to become a journalist, she writes a zine and then has to face the consequences when, published by accident, her zine reveals a rather cutting list of evaluations Alice has created about the Miss Smithers Pageant contestants. Determining she might need to learn self-defense, Alice decides to sign up for martial arts lessons and declares this her pageant talent. Adding new friends, like the smoking, drinking, partying Karen, and the born-again Christian group, threatens to mix her up more rather than help her sort things out. Being "normal," as Alice puts it, is not an easy task because no one seems to know what "normal" means. Well, at least, not in Alice's world.

     The book raises issues of teen sex and teen alcohol use and leaves a lot of room for thought about the attention adolescent girls pay to appearance, including physical and mental-well being. Developed in the context of humour, Juby manages to give her main character, Alice McLeod, the opportunity to "make better choices" but then allows the curious spontaneity of a teen to colour Alice's decisions. The character's real and quite hilarious response allows Juby to create a believable teenage girl, as, even in the face of disaster, Alice is willing to learn from her own mistakes.

     The issue of deadbeat parents continues in this sequel and might lead the reader to the question, "How can Alice's parents be ex-hippies if they still behave in the same manner as 'hippies'?" Parenting skills are not an attribute in this novel. The younger sibling, MacGregor still stands out as the sensible, hold-the-family together, genius brother, but he plays a minor role this time around.

     Juby writes well, there is no doubt about that. As the trendy teenage girl diary/young adult novels keep being published, two questions come to mind: "When have enough of these type of off-the-wall, teenage girl, soap opera diaries saturated the young adult fiction market?" and "When might we get a chance to read something else, from an obviously talented writer?"

     This type of novel, referred to as a teen's version of Bridget Jones' Diary, is still on the shelves - expect another in this series from Juby. Considering, there is a new Bridget Jones' Diary movie coming out soon, the trend may be here a while longer.

Recommended.

Jocelyn A. Dimm is a sessional instructor and doctoral student at the University of Victoria where she teaches drama education and young adult literature in the Faculty of Education.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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