MALIBU CARMIE

Thirteen-year-old Carmie lives with her depressed, divorced mother in Van Nuys, California. Carmie’s the quintessential Valley girl, a talented musician and aspiring screenwriter looking forward to high school when she gets her mom to take her to Malibu beach. There, she’s astonished to learn that her mother is an ace surfer, long-ago buds with real surfing legends. Carmie immediately wants to become a surfer, especially when she’s attracted to a cute surfer boy and she hopes that her mom might be rekindling a long-ago romance with Moondoggie, who still lives as a beachboy at Malibu. Eventually the story becomes one of the abiding love between mother and daughter. This is packed with surfer lingo that may be a bit too dense, but is accurate. The writing, in first person, is as flighty as Carmie’s character, and should appeal to its target audience. (Fiction. 11-14)