Moving Day (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Moving Day Deborah Stevenson Cabot, Meg Moving Day. Scholastic, 2008 [240p] (Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls) ISBN 978-0-545-03947-5$15.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 Nine-year-old Allie wants to make sure she learns from the wisdom she encounters and the lessons experience teaches her, so she writes down her rules of life, ranging from "Don't stick a spatula down your best friend's throat" to "You're not supposed to hate people, especially grown up people." That last lesson is currently an important one, since Allie's parents have decided it's time to move house, and Allie isn't exactly on board. True, she's not that grieved at trading in her lachrymose and traitorous friend Mary Kay for what look like cool new friends at a cool new school, but she's sure that their new house, a spooky old Victorian, has a killer zombie hand in its attic (Allie's uncle secretly lets her watch horror movies), and she's ultimately just indignant that she's being relocated without any say in the matter. Usually a snarky narration like Allie's would partner with a snappy pace, but events move along with surprising slowness here, and there's too much focus on Allie's dislike for her ostensible friends at her old school, which sours the narrative. Allie's arrogance is age-appropriate and often funny, though, and the book is subtle about her masking her essential resistance to change with more acceptable and seemingly sophisticated objections to relocation; there's also some reassuring implications about the possibility that a move can, in fact, be a good thing (it's clear that Allie's been stuck in a real rut with Mary Kay and will benefit from finally finding friends of like minds and tastes). Offer this to Jacqueline Wilson fans, or to those longing after their older sisters' titles in the Cabot oeuvre. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois