Review: Stargirl

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be honest, I never heard of this novel. One of my coworkers recommended it to me, saying that they were going to make a movie from this book, and once she realized I hadn't read it, told me I needed to.

Overall I did enjoy and like this novel. It is a super fast read and doesn't take any time to fly through it.

There is such a great message in this novel: be yourself, no matter what.

Stargirl is honestly a person I wouldn't mind becoming. I think the problem she had was she became a decent, amazing person in high school, which is not the time to be different from your peers. Especially if you are a new student. High school is brutal if no one agrees with you, and when Stargirl got shunned for being different, it was pretty hardcore actions against her.

In the end, Stargirl left her mark, and she didn't do it for the attention. She did it because that was who she was and she wanted to be kind to complete strangers, sing songs everyday, dance in the rain. She knew what she wanted and she went after it, without a care in the world of what others thought of her. That is something special and remarkable.

Leo was a typical high school guy - wanting to be in the "it-crowd" and be popular. I think he could have had an amazing time with Stargirl if he wasn't so obsessed about what other people were thinking. But that's the problem with high school - you get into this mantra that if it wasn't right with "society" then you had to change to the right way. Thankfully my high school was not like that and I acted like myself, but I've heard stories of other schools...it doesn't sound pretty.

While I thought Stargirl was a bit extreme sometimes, I admire her and am really glad I got introduced to this novel. Now I'm ready to see if they can make the movie as great as the book, because it will be hard to find an actress to portray Stargirl and her amazingness :)

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