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A HOUSE FOR JONNIE O. by Blossom Elfman Kirkus Star

A HOUSE FOR JONNIE O.

By

Pub Date: Jan. 11th, 1976
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

This is as susceptible as The Girls of Huntington House (1972) with the same stretch marks of youthful unwed experience (the author has taught girl mothers). Jonnie O. is Joanna Olson, sixteen and six months along in a ""pregnant school"" where she and her friends listen to lectures on puberty and nutrition and Robert Frost while they're daydreaming about Robert Redford or Marcus Welby--he would have understood--or fattening their tummies and submerging their troubles with Baskin-Robbins sundaes. There's the boy who didn't show again, the father who disappeared, the mother who screams, constantly. Joanna is determined to have two things--a room of her own and her baby, who'll be called Lark. With three others she tries to rent a house but nobody is interested in these ""emancipated minors"" with welfare checks; finally they do get a funny old structure offering ""a new world, wide on either side,"" until it all falls down. Not quite all, since Joanna has the stuff to accept choices, compromises. One of those truly appealing books with just the right touch--a love tap.