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ROSY COLE by Sheila Greenwald

ROSY COLE

She Grows and Graduates

by Sheila Greenwald & illustrated by Sheila Greenwald

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 1997
ISBN: 0-531-30022-6
Publisher: Orchard

It's hard to believe, but Greenwald's Rosy Cole (Rosy Cole: She Walks in Beauty, 1994, etc.) is in eighth grade—``Top of the Heap''—at Miss Read's School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The time has come for the girls to make decisions about where they will attend high school. They make an unrealistic pact to end up at the same school, but soon everyone's secret ambitions start to creep in, including Rosy's. Her crush, Donald, seems to have a new girlfriend who goes to the exclusive Hilyard, so Rosy, for all the wrong reasons, decides this is the place for her, too. She neglects friends and her art to study for admission before realizing her mistake. While such a preppy plight may not be relevant to the masses, Greenwald makes Rosy's problems universal with humorous observations (in one of the droll black-and-white illustrations that pepper the pages, one of Rosy's college-age sisters is blithely cutting holes in her jeans for school; the other is patching last year's holes) and her heroine's wry journey toward self-confidence. Readers will connect with Rosy's troubles and share her contentment when she comes out on top once more. (Fiction. 8-12)