Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree (review)

Seventh grade marks a change for Emma-Jean Lazarus, who has formerly been content to observe her illogically behaving classmates from a detached distance and focus on the academic aspect of school; when confronted with a weeping Colleen Pomerantz, who's afraid that the class alpha girl is going to sweep away Colleen's best friend, Emma-Jean decides to intervene. Successful meddling seems to give her a taste for the pastime, and she finds herself acting secretly to defend a student unjustly accused and berated by a teacher. She's puzzled, though, when her initial intercession, which started out well, seems to be making Colleen increasingly unhappy, and she's keen to understand why. Though Emma-Jean isn't an entirely believable character (her speaking without contractions, for instance, lacks the explanation that would make it more than an authorial contrivance), she's a useful lens for examining the difficulties of social interaction, and she's attractive in her self-containment and indifference to peer opinion. The third-person narration shifts between her viewpoint and that of sensitive, girly Colleen (who loves practicing her bubble writing and dropping classmates complimentary notes about their dress and hair), the two offering a comic study in extremes. The book also quietly makes its point that Emma-Jean is as vulnerable to emotions in her own way as Colleen, since Emma-Jean becomes jealous of her widowed mother's friendship with their tenant and attempts to intervene in that situation as well. Fans of the standard school-and-family story will likely enjoy the quirky spin Emma-Jean's participation puts on normal existence, even as they sympathize with her struggles to understand a perplexing world.