Okay, so… now that my sty is gone and I’m back to my modelly self (I graduated from Barbizon, okay? STEP OFF) I can concentrate on the task at hand: picking my cellphone zit, rattling my antipsychotic medication like a maraca to scare my cat, and recommending a book to my razzle-dazzle readerazzi: which (duh!) means you.

And the faun who lives in my closet.

Book Recommendation Number One:

STARRING SALLY J. FREEDMAN AS HERSELF, by Judy Blume

I seriously must have read this book eight billion times. I’d always pick it up and reread some random part while eating my after-school snack (that’s right; despite evidence to the contrary, my adolescence positively brimmed with such Norman Rockwellesque activity as after-school snacks, walking the dog, sharing a bunk with my little brother, and pacing the living room floor in hysterics begging my parents to please stopfighting!!! PLEASE!!!)

Anyway.

Because I always read SALLY J. while snacking, and because I’m a total pig, the pages were invariably encrusted with dried mustard, splatters of Progresso minestrone soup, and (on occasion) an entire hamburger. Toward the end of the book’s life I seriously had to pry the thing open with a chisel.

Why did I read the book SO many times you ask? Too many reasons to count (I guess it doesn’t help that I only know how to count to twelve). The book starts toward the end of World War 2 with Sally’s brother getting sick forcing the whole family to move to Florida so he can get some sun. See? Already awesome. Once there, Sally has tons of adventures. Like she tries out for a movie. She meets a sophisticated friend with braces. The war ends. She frets about her flat chest. She gets stung by a jelly fish. Her cousin Lila may or may not have died in a concentration camp. Her parents go on vacation to Cuba. An old man doling out candy in the neighborhood park may or may not be Hitler in disguise. And she lives next door to a glamorous teenage girl named Bubbles (I know!) whose parents pretend she’s dead (Bubbles!)

As you can see, STARRING SALLY J. FREEDMAN AS HERSELF combines two of my all timebiggest obsesh’s: tween angst and Hitler. Only the most classic combo since peanut-butter and cheese. Which, f.y.i., I spent an entire hour chiseling off pages 138 to 141.

And it was sooooo worth it.

xoRachel