The Upside of Ordinary

October 22, 2012
Jermaine is determined to be famous, but her Maine town is so far from Hollywood that movie stardom isn't likely, nor is becoming a supermodel ("Let's face it, how many supermodels can you think of that have frizzy brown hair and a palate extender?"). So the 11-year-old opts to create a reality TV show based on her family. Yet after filming her mother cleaning a chicken, her father plunging a toilet, and her sister burning microwave popcorn, Jermaine decides her family is too ordinary for TV. Her solution? She'll orchestrate the drama. In amusing, ill-fated scenarios, Jermaine botches a friend's haircut while filming a makeover and sends her arachnophobic mother screeching out of the house by setting loose a tarantula. In an easygoing story about following one's dreams and appreciating what one has, debut novelist Lubner (whose picture books include A Horse's Tale: A Colonial Williamsburg Adventure) balances well-staged comedy with Jermaine's thoughtful musings on her family's eccentricities, which lead her to recognize that "ordinary" is relative. Ages 8â12.

September 15, 2012
Jermaine is old enough to know better. She has a video camera, and she's decided that it will carve her path to fame. She plans to tape all the foibles of her typical middle-class family. She quickly realizes that those ups and downs of family life aren't sufficiently compelling, so she stages more exciting situations. She deliberately upsets a pitcher of ice water that lands in her mother's lap one winter evening, a freezing cold mess. She bribes her older sister to give her best friend a "makeover"--with pinking shears and Scare-Hair--leading to another highly photogenic calamity. Next she brings home the class pet, a tarantula, and turns it loose in the presence of her spider-phobic mother. Eleven-year-old Jermaine regrets these manufactured mishaps, but not enough to keep her from staging another in the quest for the television fame that surely awaits her. Jermaine's pie-in-the-face comedy teeters on the brink of mean-spiritedness, saved only by her eventual, albeit late, recognition of the pain she's inflicted. Surrounded by a cast of nearly normal folks, lightly sketched but believably depicted, and narrating in the present tense, Jermaine neatly captures her living-in-the-moment, no-holds-barred attitude. This debut novel offers an amusing lesson on the downside of reality television, one that readers will catch on to far sooner than the misguided protagonist. (Fiction. 9-12)

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December 1, 2012

Gr 4-6-There is not much out of the ordinary in Bangor, Maine, where 11-year-old Jermaine lives with her pickle-making mom, cranky big sister Zelda, and just plain dad. She wants to be famous, like paparazzi-stalked, red-carpet, flashbulbs famous. Using her family and friends as her reality-show fodder, she hopes to capture the attention of famous TV producer Rufus Carmichael. She writes to him throughout the book, explaining how she tries to instigate more drama and excitement from those around her. During the course of the action, she does succeed in scaring her mother out of the house, making a tough situation with her uncle worse, and messing up a whole batch of her mother's pickles. In the end, she realizes her mistakes, finds a good way to use her camera, and does become a little bit famous via her mom, the pickle lady of Maine. The premise for this book is current, but the pacing of the story is very slow, and many of the child's efforts seem boring or outright mean. Even though this novel is an easy read, it will not have wide appeal.-Nancy Jo Lambert, Ruth Borchardt Elementary, Plano, TX

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2012
Grades 3-6 I felt shiny. It's no wonder famous people are called stars. After her success as Pinocchio in the school play, 11-year-old Jermaine Davidson is determined to become famous in this breezy debut novel. The young reality television addict starts video recording her family's interactions, hoping to cash in on the drama with a reality show of their own. She soon discovers, however, that their lives, especially her mother's backyard pickle business, are just not that interesting. In an effort to enliven her footage, Jermaine sets up tension, such as giving her BFF a makeover with pinking shears, to disastrous results. The tween soon realizes that reality television is far from the whole truth, her seemingly boring family is just fine the way it is, and there are more meaningful ways to use a video camera. Although readers will see Jermaine's troubles coming long before she does, the lessons will not be lost. Most effectively, her uncle's disappearance and the circumstances around it mirror the family's disappointmentand eventual acceptanceof Jermaine's mistakes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013
Fame-hungry eleven-year-old Jermaine thinks producing her own reality show is her ticket to Hollywood--if only her life in rural Maine weren't so uneventful. Jermaine's lack of scruples in creating sticky situations for her family may disallow readers from connecting with her, but it helps to hammer home the ultimate lesson about exploitation in this timely, humorous novel.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)