KICK A STONE HOME

by Doris Buchanan Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1974

The year that she is fifteen (but feels alternately ten and forty-two), athletic Sara, who wants to be a vet (though her mother thinks she'll outgrow the ambition), stops playing football with the boys, develops an odd, new kind of ""liking"" for newcomer Giff Proctor, dates Bill Sluker with uneasy distaste for his presumptuous advances, and gradually finds enough confidence in her own style and convictions that she not only hits it off in the end with a compatible male classmate but she even feels free to return to the football games. But the year is far from dominated by thoughts of boys -- there is also Sara's conflict with a teacher (resolved at last by her own mature generosity), the death of her dog and later adoption of a stray, with the promise of a summer job helping the vet, and -- more disturbingly (though less understandably) -- her discovery that Dave Kellerman, the young married neighbor who had befriended her, is the probable burglar of Sara's family's apartment. In all, Doris Buchanan Smith gives us a likable heroine who is gratifyingly her own person, learning to reconcile her ""unfeminine"" interests with her lateblooming still nonspecific interest (""doing that"" with a boy remains unimaginable) in the opposite sex as such.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 152

Publisher: T.Y. Crowell

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION