![]() He grabs Mickeys cookies at lunch and then laughs in his face. ![]() He crunches Mickeys fingers on the jungle gym and says, Ask me if I care. Again, Caseley (as she did in her well- regarded first novel, Kisses, 1990) captures the confusion and unwonted passivity of an assertive girl who is painfully unsure of her attractivenessher native feistiness barely resurfaces in time to. Mickey and Jack used to be friends, but Jack has taken to bullying of late. Zoe Cohen, 15, is struggling with the disruptions in family life caused by her father's severe depression, and with her own inner turmoil over dating. In the story's promising, emotionally-charged conclusion, Zoe's father-and the entire family-are showing sure signs of healing. Returning to the characters from Field Day Friday (2000), Caseley offers some sensible advice about handling a bully. Since Caseley's descriptions of these escapades are fairly candid and graphic, it is advisable that the book's suggested age guidelines be observed. While harboring a great deal of anger towards her father, Zoe manages to survive several key teenage rites of passage, including first and last dates with a couple of boys who have only one thing on their minds. My own father suffered from depression when I was growing up, but this is a funny, upbeat novel in which Zo not only survives, but also thrives. Through Zoe's perceptive and realistic first-person narrative, Caseley ( Kisses ) reveals the devastating toll that such an illness can take on a family-and especially on an unusually thoughtful, sensitive girl. ![]() ![]() Cohen quits his job, stays in bed most of the day and grows more and more detached from Zoe, her mother and two sisters. In the words of 15-year-old Zoe Cohen, her father's accident (he drove his car into a tree) marked ``the ominous beginning.'' Things slip from bad to worse: severely depressed, Mr. ![]()
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