Libby on Wednesday

Rating:
Summary: Silly premise, but not bad
Review: I have never met any homeschooling parent who sent a homeschooled child to school so she could be "socialized." The author buys into the socialization myth, a non-homeschooler's idea of homeschooling, rendering the better part of the book quite unrealistic. The old adage "write what you know" is a good rule. I suppose since most editors and publishers are also not homeschoolers, and believe all the rumors they hear about socialization, they could not be expected to catch this glaring mistake.

In other ways, the book is quite good. It clearly, though perhaps unintentionally, outlines the best reasons why normal socialization can never happen in an institution. Accepting abuse from other students is not normal.

Libby's struggles in school are quite real, and from that perspective, the book is enjoyable for those of us who have been there, and is an amusing, well written, and interesting (though skewed) treat for homeschooled kids who wonder what all the blather about "school" and "socialization" are really about.

And it begs the question...can a child coming from a brilliantly eccentric housefull of social misfits still fit in at home after attending institutional school? And while the author admits that a child who can read the NY Times will learn nothing in kindergarten, she leaves us to answer the question, "Can a child familiar with Socrates learn anything in middle school?"



Rating:
Summary: A Really Good Book
Review: I think that Libby On Wednesday is a really good book. Libby is a girl who is completely unsocialized and accidentally wins a writing contest. She and five other students that win, start a writing club. The other students are a bully named Gary Greene who everybody calls G.G. (Gary the Ghoul), Alex a geeky boy who is physically challenged, Wendy a popular cheerleader who thinks she's a queen, and Tierney a chunky girl who's into punk. The students start a writing club and read their stories to the other members and say what they liked and give constructive suggestions. Wendy likes to write about teens and their love life, Alex writes parodies, Tierney writes detective stories, G.G. writes gruesome stories about killing, ang Libby writes all kinds of stories that are so good that the other kids think that her famous grandfather wrote them for her. The students all dislike each other. They say mean things about stories that people share with each other. As you read on, you will find that each student has a secret. I recommend this book to anyone over the age of eight.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I thought Libby on Wednesday was a great book. It was about a girl named Libby who had been tutored at home all her life. Her mother, Mercedes, decided Libby needed to be "socialized", so Libby was forced to go to school. There she got put in a writing club that met weekly with a bunch of people who teased her for being short and smart. Libby on Wednesday is about what happened to them. I loved the book because I'm tutored at home and people think I'm weird and they tease. I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: Libby on Wednesday
Review: I usually enjoy Zilpha Keatly Snyder's books and this was no exception. In this book the main character, Libby, has been homeschooled all her life by her eccentric relatives until her mother decides she must be "socialized." Libby is very different from everyone else at Morrison Middle School and hates the school. Libby enters one of her stories into a writing contest and wins. All the winners must join a creative writing group, which is later in the book named FFW, or the Future Famous Writers. Almost the entire book is centered on the relationships between the FFW members.

The FFW members were not just your ordinary nerds, bullies, and cheerleaders, either. It was very interesting to see how the FFW members' views of each other changed during the book. One of the characters, that intriged me the most was Gary Greene, otherwise known as G.G.. All the other characters actions were explained throughout the book. Only at the end did you find out why G.G. acted so strangely. I really enjoyed this book and I strongly recommend reading it.

Rating:
Summary: This is a cool book!
Review: Libby on Wednesday is a really cool book. The characters are really cool and interesting. The plot is interesting, and a big scene at the end makes this book totally exciting. This is a really great book!

Rating:
Summary: Five very different kids and their writing club
Review: This book is about a girl named Libby, who struggles to make friends, but finally makes friends in the end. The book opens up as Libby stops home-schooling and goes to Morrison Middle School. She has a hard time fitting in because of the way she looks and the way she acts. There is a writing contest and Libby wins it because of her excellent writing. The other winners are G.G., a mean bully; Alex,a wierd boy in special classes; Tierney, a punk and detective girl and Wendy, president of student council and cheerleader. A famous writer who was head of the contest, decides that they should meet every week and talk about their writing. The five teens are not very nice to each other in the beginning. As they meet every week, they become good friends, best friends at that. I felt that this book was very good and told a true story that happens in real life.

Rating:
Summary: LOW is very pulls-u-into-it-til-u-cant-stop-reading-it-ish
Review: this book really 's got a lot going for it, and is good for kids ages 8-about 11 or 12. it has examples of a good family life and good friends, as well as a wholesome, if somewhat odd, girl. I would read it if I were you.

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book!
Review: This is a wonderful book! It has a great story, and once you get into it you can't put it down. The characters are all really likeable. This is a great book for anyone to read, not just elementary students (although elementary students will enjoy it, too). This is a totally awesome book!

Rating:
Summary: "The Breakfast Club" book for older elementary students
Review: What can a genius do when, after years of home schooling, her wacky family decides that she needs to interact with her peers? Not much. After being forced to enter a writing contest and accidentally winning, Libby has to spend the afternoons in a writing club with four other, vastly different students who also won: the school bully, the punkish tomboy, the princess, and the geek. As in the movie "The Breakfast Club," their relationships and interactions evolve from the stereotypical ones (bully picks on everyone, princess snubs punk girl)into something almost akin to friendship as circumstances force them together.