MY LONE STAR SUMMER

When Jill, 12, spends the summer on her grandmother's Texas ranch, back in the town where she grew up, she finds her best friend, B.J., looking like a movie star in hot pink shorts. B.J. is all wrapped up in a boy, and isn't interested in riding bikes or climbing trees anymore. Jill, whose parents are divorced, doesn't like change; to keep B.J.'s friendship, she sometimes acts against her better judgement, with near disastrous results. Tension simmers between the girls, but as the summer progresses Jill realizes that she is changing, too, and that it isn't all bad. Love (Bess's Log Cabin Quilt, p. 472, etc.) sensitively portrays the tumultuousness of early adolescence. The characters are well-developed, as is the relationship between Jill and feisty Gran. Occasionally Jill's first-person narration comes across as entirely too reflective and polished for a 12-year-old, especially in the somewhat superfluous closing paragraphs. Love's story is otherwise authentic, lively, and often very funny.