Georgie's Moon (review)

Georgie's the new girl at Glendale, Indiana's new middle school, and until her father returns from Vietnam, she's determined to make everyone's life as miserable as her own. She upsets the children for whom her mother babysits, she vandalizes a prized possession of the school counselor, she recruits malleable Lisa as friend and partner in a despised Good Deed required project (which she fully intends to undermine), and she continually promotes her own reputation as the class troublemaker. However, Lisa turns out to have a bit more backbone than Georgie suspected, their elderly "projects" at the retirement home prove more interesting than she anticipated, her peacenik classmates slowly convince her they may have a valid point, and in a twist of a climax that Woodworth keeps cleverly under wraps, Georgie is finally forced to admit that her father is, in fact, never coming home from the war. There's plenty of potentially moving drama here, but the players are so carefully programmed to move through their revelatory moments, Georgie herself is so staunchly unlikable, and her 180^º spin from bad girl to sensitive reformee is so precipitous that it's difficult to warm fully to the tale. It's fast moving, though, with plenty of conversation and subversion, and it could therefore be a welcome quick pick for middle-graders.