Kicked Out. (Orca Soundings). Beth Goobie. Victoria, BC: Orca Books, 2002. 92 pp., pbk., $9.95. ISBN 1-55143-244-7. Grades 7-9 / Ages 12-14. Review by Joan Marshall. ** /4

excerpt:

Gabe saw me. His grin got a little wider, and he lifted an eyebrow. Then he looked away. I felt like something that had been thrown into the trash. For a moment, I considered creeping off to my library hideout. Then I remembered what Darren had said about Gabe ordering me around. Gabe wasn't actually saying anything right now. Still, he was telling me, I'm finished with you, so get lost.

Well, I was finished with him too.

The thought blew through me like a happy wind, cleaning out a lot of crud.

Fifteen-year-old Dime deliberately provokes her parents with her nose ring, low school marks and idiot boyfriend with a motorbike. She moves to her older brother's apartment, agreeing to cook for him. A quadriplegic, her brother Darren provides the breathing space and the compassion, not to mention the silence from no yelling, that Dime needs to see her life in perspective. Gradually she realizes that her boyfriend is using her, that she likes to do decently well at school, and that she can speak to her parents without screaming.

     Told in the first person and set in Winnipeg, Kicked Out is an accurate reflection of the emotional lives of many teenage girls who act out in a cry to be loved for who they are. This short novel, set in large, accessible type will appeal to struggling readers who are drawn to emotional, contemporary stories in which the heroine triumphs on her own terms. The details of Darren's successful adjustment to his disability and the reality that social life is the centre of students' lives at school create contemporary, realistic settings that will attract reluctant readers. Kicked Out is reminiscent of the “Series 2000" novels that made reading a book a possibility for students who may have given up on reading.

Recommended.

Joan Marshall is the teacher-librarian at Fort Richmond Collegiate in Winnipeg, MB.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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