SILVER

In her first book since Newbery Honor After the Rain, Mazer explores the implications and imperatives of friendship through the eyes of Sarabeth Silver--whose entry into a new junior high introduces her to an unfamiliar world of wealth and privilege. Silver (as she prefers to be called) lives in a trailer park with her widowed mother, who cleans for a living and is fiercely determined that her daughter will do better. Silver's initial loneliness in the school where her mother has finessed her entry is mitigated by her crush on Grant, a sophisticated gift who seems to be all that Silver can never be. Eventually, Silver's tentative offers of friendship are reciprocated, and she becomes a member of Grant's group of friends, who at first seem distant but who turn out to have their own real problems. In a wrenching climax involving incest, it is Silver who comes to the rescue of one of the other girls. While the characterization is a little uneven here, it is the chief strength of a story that is somewhat loosely plotted, though consistently engaging. Mazer again hews to her theme of the value of accepting people for what they are; readers will find Silver a memorable friend.