LUCY ELLEN

Lucy's predicaments are usually her own fault, the result of trying to make an impression on some boy or other, from buying a car on the side to learning to roller-skate. She has her horrible moments of playing nursemaid to the baby and keeping house. But they are all such things as might happen to a normal impulsive girl, the characters are well-drawn and convincing, Lucy Ellen tells her own story and can laugh at herself, and the use of modern idioms and colloquialisms shows that the author knows her seventeen-year-olds. The flavor and quality reminds one of the Maudie stories by the Lorimers. Good fun -- in a field that is rarely successful.