THE DIVIDED HEART

An award manuscript in the Youth Today contest, here is an exceptional book for adolescents, dealing with a background many young people are facing- the background of a home broken by divorce. Shorn of sentimentality, presented in a rarely sensitive, realistic manner, this story of Julie is worthwhile on its own merits as a tender, imaginative and well-rounded tale. Julie is a deeply felt character; her unhappiness is not glossed over as she finds her loyalties strained between her parents. The handling of the reasons for divorce is skillful and restrained (and might well serve as a model of how adults should explain the problem to their children). There's a sense of wholesome, generous resolution of a deep conflict, the sane responses of mother and daughter to an unhappy situation. Julie finds expanding relations, new interests in music, in work in a nursery, in a new beau, in a summer business venture; she lives a rich full school life; and she finds that new decisions set her well on the way to maturity.... In selling this book -- or circulating it in public libraries, its subject matter should be recognized but not as a necessarily controversial issue in what is primarily a first rate high school story for girls.