RUN, SHELLEY, RUN!

More case history than heroine, Shelley is labeled a Person in Need of Supervision at the request of her alcoholic mother and, after several escapes from a prisonlike state training school, ends up in solitary confinement just one step away from a mental breakdown. Shelley's life, at least up to the appearance of a sympathetic judge who takes a personal interest in securing her freedom, traces the pattern by which neglected children and minor offenders may be sentenced to institutions -- and exposed there to drugs, enforced homosexuality and their more hardened peers. This chain of injustice has its own grim fascination, though if Shelley herself were somewhat less blonde and blameless, the temptation to see her as an exceptional victim would be less, and her plight would make weightier demands on the reader's understanding and humanity.