Rating: 
Summary: Lisa's Life
Review: I thought The Girl Who Owned The City was a really good book. There were a couple parts I liked, such as when Lisa hit the commander right in the face. She is very courageous. One part of the book that I didn't like was the author's choice to ignore the question of the dead bodies.
Rating:
Summary: Lisa's World
Review: I thought The Girl Who Owned A City was an awesome book, one of the best I have read. It had some cool parts in it. My favorite part was when Lisa punched the commander of the other army. It was hilarious. One bad part was when the book suddenly ended. The author should write a sequel to this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing,spectacular book!!
Review: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a world with no adults? With gangs that terrorise just to get food. In "The Girl Who Owned A City" By O.T. Nelson, the kids of a city have to find food and shelter on there own! The adults of this city are all dead since a killing virus swept the earth, killing everyone over the age of 12. You think thats impossible, right? Well, thanks to a girl named Lisa, these kids have food, shelter and water. Gangs have come at night stealing food, but Lisa finds a way to fix that. Lisa and the kids go on a journey finding food and water. With kids stealing from other kids, Lisa has to rule the city. This book is adventerous and SUSPENSEFUL! I recommend this book to everyone,Even adults. You will learn a lot from this book. So go on read it!
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Summary: The Girl Who Owned a City
Review: The survival story, The Girl who owned a City by O.T. Nelson si a tale about a young girl named Lisa and her 5-year old brother, Todd, who have to adapt to their new life as orphans due to the horrible disease that killed all people over 12 years old. Lisa is a determined young girl with hopes to renew the old, civilized way of life, and with the help of the other kids on Grand Avunue, food, toys, and shelter will come within reach. However, their plans are interfered with the fact that they can easily be wiped out by the neighborhood gangs. Can Lisa and the other kids of Grand Avenue protect themselves from the wrath of Tom Logan and the Chedister gang? And will Lisa's plan for a castle city work out? O.T. Nelson's style will put you into the shoes of Lisa, and the suspense building in his climax wil keep those pages turning.The Girl Who Owned a City is a compelling story worth reading over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: Loved the book...but disappointed....
Review: I absolutely loved this book about a 10 year old girl owning her own city.
I loved the characters and everything.
But a few things I was disappointed about.
In book I read it said on O.T.'s author section that he
was currently working on a prequel or sequel.
But I have checked and have found none.
...
Rating: 
Summary: The Girl Who Owned a Dictatorship
Review: When I was ten or so I fancied myself quite the writer. One of my favorite plots involved a story in which all the grown-ups on my street disappeared and the kids had to fend for themselves. O.T. Nelson has gone a bit further with "The Girl Who Owned a City". In this book, all humans over the age of thirteen have been wiped out by a deadly plague. It is up to Lisa, the book's protagonist, to found a new community where the children can live and work in peace without worrying about roving violent gangs. This is a story that could have been written by me at ten. Unfortunately, the writing itself seems as if it WAS written by a ten-year-old.Don't get me wrong. The idea of this book is a lot of fun. What kid wouldn't want to own their own city? To rule over a lot of other children? To be their inspired leader? So two thumbs up on the idea for the plot. Two thumbs down for the actual book. The real problem with this story is the poor poor writing. Nelson fills this text with a myriad of different kinds of inconsistencies and B-movie dialogue. For example, the book opens with this line, "At this time last Tuesday, she (Lisa) had been sitting, patiently, in fifth-grade social studies". So the plague officially finished a week ago. Fast forward seventy-five pages in a section that happens roughly four or five days later. " 'What will happen to us?' she wondered for the hundredth time since October". This happens around Christmas day. So apparently last Tuesday was roughly two months ago. Other problems persist. This plague happened so quickly that farmers were unable to free their livestock. Yet not a single human body is ever found, or even eluded to. And why do none of the characters in this book (save one, briefly) ever miss their parents? I suppose Nelson reasoned that you can't have a fun post-apocalyptic story bogged down by actual emotions. But couldn't the author have at least tried? Compound little logical problems like this with the actual plot's problems, and you begin to see what I'm talking about. There is no electricity in this world, nor plumbing either. When Lisa decides to make a fortress out of the abandoned high school she thinks of everything. Like a castle, none of the children will need to leave it. Unlike a castle, its plumbing isn't working. How are these 300 some kids showering and using the toilets? Also, why are these kids the only ones who ever thought to seek out food in warehouses and to drive cars? Wouldn't driving cars be the first things kids would do if their parents disappeared forever? Finally, there is the big big problem of the moral of the story. Lisa refers continually to her fortress as MY city. The city that SHE owns. Various kids point out that this isn't the smartest thing to go around doing. After all, she hardly did all the work making it safe herself. Yet the book firmly stands by her statements. Lisa has an eminently interesting speech when one of her captains attempts to convince her that voting is a good thing. "Do you think it would be fair for the group to decide that all the supplies I found were suddenly community property, and that I don't have the right to decide how they should be used? What would stop them from deciding to vote away my right to the cars I find, now that I've taught children how to drive?" So there you are folks. If you have a charismatic leader who claims all authority and doesn't allow free elections.... well that's just swell. People can't be allowed to have a say in their own governance. They just mess stuff up. I'd love to do a fast forward on this story, twenty years into the future when the protagonist is battling for continual unquestioned power from her people. The blurb on the back of this book (in paperback form) compares this story to "Lord of the Flies". Not an entirely correct statement ("Lord of the Flies" is, what we call, GOOD writing) but given enough time I've little doubt that the characters in this story will reach that sticky end soon enough. Fortunately, I didn't have to spend any more time with this book than I already had.
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Summary: Definitely a Fantastic Book
Review: The Girl Who Owned A City is a book that I could make so many connections to, it's fantastic. For one thing, we live on the very lot that Lisa's house was on before it burned down. Also, my teenage daughter is going to Glenbard, and it really does resemble a castle or fortress. A really good reason that the book is fantastic is that the author used a real life town, and could use characters molded from the residents. Good job Nelson!
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Summary: I read over 20 years ago....
Review: ...but to this day, I would say this book turned me onto reading more than any other. I had been a pretty good reader, having read a lot of the Hardy Boys books, but this book opened my eyes to good story-telling. The plot is captivating and especially appealing to kids - a world with no adults, what more could you want? I'm sure a lot of boys will never read it simply because the title refers to a girl owning a city. That's too bad, because the book is a thought-provoking read in the guise of excellent entertainment. Buy it for your own kids, your nephews and nieces or just the neighbor next door.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring Premise, Bad Protagonist
Review: Among the more enjoyable parts of this book (as well as the reason I actually read it in the first place) was because of its basic idea. The idea of children, usually a proletariate ruled by adults, making their own civilization attracted me to this book. I do believe that, given the education and competence, a mature enough kid COULD forge a nation of children. But later as I continued reading I grew disillusioned with Lisa's behavior. One time Tom Logan, leader of the Chidester gang, makes a rather fair deal with Lisa: the Chidester warriors will protect Lisa's virgin nation, and Lisa and co. will provide food for them. Sounds like a good deal, but Lisa turns it down, "not trusting them". For God's sake, Lisa, these are starving kids who believe they must resort to theivery for their survival, not villains who steal just for the hell of it! Later, when the subject of democracy is brought up, Lisa says it'll get the kids to vote her rights out. Ha, ha, what kind of political scientist would make that straw man of a claim? Oh well, one could always write a better book with the same unique premise this has.
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Summary: ReReading for tidbits
Review: This book has always been one of my favorites, but I can now appreciate how it fits right in with books of the likes of "Lord of the Flies" (looking at my book, i realize that the cover even mentions LOTF on it). It also has a lot of parallels to real life forms of government. Read and re-read the stories that Lisa tells Todd. They're really much more in depth than one thinks at first read.
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