Not Your All-American Girl is a second book told from the perspective, or POV, of Lauren, a 12-year-old girl who's half-Chinese, half-Jewish. I reviewed the first book, This is Just a Test, a while ago. It was told from her older brother David's POV and we loved it! We dubbed it the "warring grandmothers" book, as it had us quoting lines and laughing out loud over the dinner table as we discussed it.
This time, the grandmas are there, but they've lost a bit of their mojo. There are still funny scenes, like when one more-or-less admits she selectively doesn't hear the other when it comes time to fold laundry, or when one accidentally-on-purpose bumps her purse into the other's rear end. So there were some LOL moments, but this is really more Lauren's story.
Lauren chafes under the shadow of her joined-at-the-hip best (white) friend, Tara. They're so joined, they've developed a "Royal We" response. Which was fine, until middle school. Now, Lauren notices that everything Tara does, she excels at, even when she's not necessarily the "best" at whatever she's trying out for. Including the audition for the school's production of its next hula-hooping musical sensation, Shake It Up, written and casted by the school's drama teacher.
Despite nailing the audition, and having a voice an angel would die for, Lauren doesn't get a solo role. She's placed in the chorus, while Tara with her less-than-stellar voice and choreography gets the lead role. Worse, the drama teacher explains it's because Tara looks the part, with her blonde ponytail and blue eyes. Tara is what the audience expects in an All-American girl. Lauren, with her Chinese eyes and long black hair, is not.
Which we know is hogwash, but this is the 80s, and having lived through it, yes, this kind of thinking was very much in place at the time. It was hard to get noticed with brown hair, much less black. Blonde was very…"in."
Lauren starts her own button business (it was an 80s thing!), and Tara inadvertently takes it over by trying to be supportive and having her mom, who's running for an elected office, place a large order for buttons.
I won't spoil how it ends, or exactly how the girls subvert the era's prevailing attitude of exclusivity into an inclusive song and dance number. You'll have to read it to figure that out.
But it was a lot of fun and I rooted for Lauren and Tara the whole way! Enjoy.
