Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen

From the Publisher

Fifteen-year-old Colie is spending the summer with her eccentric Aunt Mira while her mother travels. Formerly chubby and still insecure, Colie has built a shell around herself. But her summer with her aunt, her aunt's tenant Norman, and her friends at the Last Chance Diner&150teaches her some important lessons about friendship and learning to love yourself.

Publishers Weekly

A plot description of this contemporary problem novel may make it sound like a kind of Cinderella story, but Dessen's (Someone Like You) ironic sense of humor and her knack for creating characters with both quirky personalities and universal emotions set her book apart. Colie's fitness-celebrity mom (a female version of Richard Simmons) long ago motivated her to lose 45.5 pounds, but Colie feels just as insecure as she did when she was overweight, and she is a pariah at school. During Colie's 15th summer, her mother goes on an extended tour of Europe, and Colie is sent to outlandish Aunt Mira in Colby, N.C. There Colie is influenced by a singular group of mentors: the young women next door, Isabel and Morgan, who give Colie a makeover as well as a waitressing job; Mira's young boarder, Norman, who has moved out of his bullying auto-dealer dad's house so he can pursue a career in art; and Mira herself, a greeting-card illustrator who is as enormous and eccentric as she is immune to the ostracism of the locals. As readers will anticipate, Colie begins a happy metamorphosis; unexpectedly, her transformation is interrupted by the arrival of a mean-mouthed schoolmate who is all too eager to cut Colie down. Readers will lap up the snappy dialogue, colorful episodes and unexpected pearls of wisdom. The lessons Colie learns about beauty, none of them new, come across with freshness and vitality. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Children's Literature

This is young adult fiction at its best. Dessen has written a sensitive and very modern story about a fifteen-year-old girl who reluctantly spends the summer on the beach with her crazy aunt, and she discovers what "girl night," good friends, and boys are all about. Colie has grown up overweight and is always the new kid at school. She listens to angry music and shields herself from the unfriendly world with her dyed hair and lip ring. When her mother's newfound fame as an aerobics instructor and infomercial heroine takes her on a European tour, Colie feels she is doomed to a lonely and boring summer. But a quirky cast of characters and an unexpected job at the local beach cafe bring with them a healthy helping of new experiences. Her eccentric Aunt Mira, Norman the hippie-artist who lives in the basement, and her waitress mentors help Colie begin to see herself and the world around her in a different way. Colie learns that it is not the comments of her classmates or the town busybodies that define a person, and that all butterflies have a caterpillar in their closet. In the tradition of classic adolescent fiction, Desson has written a hip and engaging story of self-discovery and personal growth. This is a wonderful read with strong messages for young girls coming into their own.

Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-Formerly fat Colie cannot shed her poor self image until she spends the summer with her eccentric aunt and develops a friendship with two worldly waitresses. A story heaped with crackling dialogue and sharp humor. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-Because her aerobics-star mother is taking her famous weight-loss program to Europe, 15-year-old Colie leaves her home in Charlotte to spend the summer with her endearing but uncompromisingly unusual Aunt Mira in coastal Colby, NC. Colie has recently dropped 45 pounds, but unlike her positive-thinking mother, the teen has not succeeded in shedding her negative self-image. With this change of scene, she hopes to escape her role as social victim. Unfortunately, Mira attracts lots of negative gossip. Worse still is the reappearance of Colie's hometown nemesis who continues to spread slanderous rumors about her. Colie feels hopeless until she accepts a job in a restaurant, where two fellow waitresses, both past their high school angst, share their beauty, boy, and life-management secrets with her. Sincere, perfectionist Morgan and the more flamboyant Isabel are great characters and the workings of their friendship is smooth, insightful, and just fun to read. The nifty and not-so-nifty relationships between men and women are observed through the eyes of a teen just on the verge of exploring such things on her own level. The love interests are varied, from a deceitful professional athlete for Morgan to a sincere artist surviving as a short-order cook for Colie. Through it all, readers are shown that "ya-ya" type friendships are a balm to protect young women while they're kissing toads they thought were princes. Teens will just want to cheer when Colie realizes that she has always had within what people were looking for externally.-Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Dessen (Someone Like You, 1998, etc.) continues her run of engagingly cast stories about women helping each other through life-altering experiences. Former fat girl Colie Sparks arrives in her aunt's small town physically fit but still bowed by memories of years of humiliation. Under the influence of eccentric Aunt Mira's rock-steady self-assurance, witnessing a marvelously contentious friendship between twenty-something waitresses Morgan and Isabel, and becoming aware of shy, artistically gifted Norman—who goes from being "so not the guy for me," to one whose smiles she feels "all the way to my toes"—Colie passes in subtly marked stages to the point where she can let her past go, although not before exacting exquisite revenge on one of her past tormenters. Rich in sharply observed relationships, deftly inserted wisdom, romances ending and beginning, and characters who are not afraid to pick themselves up and try again, Dessen's tale will leave readers thoughtful, amused, reassured—and sorry when it concludes. (Fiction. 12-15)

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