She isn't this perfect ball of sunshine every moment.
Unlike the first book where we had no real window into her experiences, here she struggles to clear her head of the teenage thoughts, the worries, the doubts, the hurts, the hopes. She still meditates daily, but we come to find out that she sometimes struggles with it - and a lot else too. Here is a Stargirl who still takes joy in learning, befriending others, and in seeing and spreading joy. Hearing every moment of her next year from her point of view, in her words, in her shifting emotions, their evolution, only adds to the heartache.īut by writing this book through her eyes, we see a very different Stargirl than in the first novel. And it is broken, more so than she realizes at the beginning. Structurally, this book is from Stargirl's point of view and written in the form of a near-daily letter from Stargirl to Leo, the boy who broke her heart in the prior book. "Love, Stargirl" takes place one year after the events of the first book as Stargirl (and you'll need to have read it as background information) and her parents have moved to a small town in Pennsylvania. "Love, Stargirl" is superior in most every way and especially in its humanization of the person Stargirl. I bought, but never read its sequel, "Love, Stargirl," because I never wanted to be without her, but was afraid that reading it would break the spell and ruin it for me. Regardless of the fact that I didn't truly buy into Stargirl as a person, and was really upset by Leo's actions, the book transfixed me, it hit me at a very personal level, a level that I'm sure Jerry Spinelli couldn't have conceived of when he wrote that book. However Leo, in his complete and utter failure to be good to her, was a very realistic depiction of the challenges facing young men, the complexity of growing up, the pressures of society, etc.etc. In fact, I really felt that Stargirl was written too much like a manic pixie dream girl and not a very authentic teen. I'm dating myself, but for fans of the show "Dharma and Greg," she's much like a teenage Dharma.īut it wasn't her non-conformity that made that book resonate with me.
"Stargirl" was celebrated for its championing of non-conformity (Stargirl's given name is Susan) through all the "wacky" things she does to bring joy into the world.
Ultimately they become friends, then a couple, then he cannot fully digest what it means to be good to her, nor can she fully tolerate what she's giving up to be good to him, and the whole thing collapses just as she moves out of town. He's terrified and awestruck by her at the same time. "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli (whose wife's work has a special place in my family's heart) told the story of Leo when a strange, homeschooled girl, named Stargirl, starts attending his school. It's probably the better book even without all the critical acclaim of its predecessor. I put off reading this book for a long while, uncertain whether I wanted to disrupt the strange magic the first book left with me. Yes, this blog (and my twitter handle is named after the book " Stargirl" which means this review of its sequel "Love, Stargirl" isn't going to be very objective (no review ever is) but also is likely to go off the rails compared to typical reviews.
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