I spent most of the 400-pages waiting for a plot to show up. What it also proves to me, however, is that fictional diaries are not particularly fun or edifying to read. To his credit, Mandabach has written what I believe is a pretty realistic vision of this girl’s diary and inner world, proof that his experience as a teacher and parent has paid off. The novel consists of Cassie’s diary entries as she enters eighth grade, as well as three variations on a short story she completes for writing club. Or maybe the authorship just isn’t all there. post-) between me and Cassie, or geographic location (New Jersey v. Perhaps the distance in generation (pre-9/11 v. So it was difficult, reading this novel, to accept the realism of a junior-high class that turns on a student because she doesn’t believe that the earth is 6,000-years-old or that Jesus is behind the stars. In my junior high, I was a bit of a weirdo for taking Catholic social teaching seriously (like don’t kill. And I definitely wouldn’t have gotten the atheist thing. Not because our core views were really all that different, but because Cassie so obviously opposes the “system.” I wouldn’t have understood the Pledge of Allegiance thing, or purposefully throwing a standardized test. To be honest, Cassie is the kind of girl who would have terrified me as a junior-high student. But yes, she is vegan and she does speak up for evolution when her Christian classmates challenge a science article. She isn’t a role model for the internationalist, anti-capitalist kids I hope my peers are raising. Okay, she says she’s patriotic even though she won’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at school and she refuses to sing “Proud To Be an American” in choir (but “America the Beautiful” is okay…) - no, all the contradictions haven’t exactly been worked out. Okay, she hasn’t thought about the class system yet or the roots of poverty. Our protagonist Cassie is a 13-going-on-14-year-old vegan, child of liberal parents (whose views she seems to share wholly, aside from the veganism), social misfit. This may not be the kind of young adult fiction that a thirty-something can appreciate.

...Or Not? by Brian Mandabach