TOMBOY

Now ten and possessed of a baby brother, the unremarkable heroine of Confessions of an Only Child is unhappy here because old friend Libby excludes her from the Tomboy Club. Toe, it seems, is too ""girly girly,"" with her slacks that don't zip in front and her lack of interest in sports. Worse, Toe gets her period early, and besides feeling unready for all that the event implies, she's terrified that the club members will find out about this violation of tomboy values. Then Toe's attention switches to finding a home for basset hound Hortense whose owner has just died, and when Libby takes Hortense and turns out to have breasts (which Toe, oddly, has not yet developed despite her early period), the two girls are friends once more. As you'd expect, Klein gives Toe's pubescent reluctance a consciously contemporary setting--a little too deliberately representative of this and that attitude toward girly girls and tomboys. Smooth, but shallow.