SPOTLIGHT SUMMER

As lazy and unambitious a girl as Lucy Taylor at the beginning of her seventeenth summer is hard to imagine and was obviously difficult for the author to portray. Involvement in community theater through a crush on the college-age director causes Lucy to assume responsibility for the costuming of a play requiring Elizabethan ress. She comes to realize that the belated offers of friendship from the high school ingroup are shallow and boring and learns to value the creativity of her former steady, the boy next door. Despite the characterization of major figures by typing them as the driver of a jalopy or of a white convertible, and indecision as to the color of the heroine's hair (auburn to taffy to auburn without benefit of dye) the author does create some sympathy for the aspirations of young theater enthusiasts and cries to give some depth to her teen-agers through their actions.