Truth to Tell

Rating:
Summary: Teen Angst Half a Century Away
Review: This book shows that children in the 50's weren't as docile and obedient as your grandparents claim they were. Alice, the main character, constantly bickers with her mother, who has unwillingly dragged her to New Zealand(of all places!). In places, the book is sarcastic and funny, but I docked it major points for being rather boring in the beginning. Along with the normal problems of moving and being the new kid at school, Alice has to move into an intimidating old mansion with a lady that hates kids and an uncooperative, grumpy old man, and also discovers a mystery regarding her origins.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: This book, Truth to Tell, is about a young girl called Alice who is being dragged halfway around the world by her mother, who is going to help an eccentric old lady, Miss Emilia Fairchild, write a book about her house. Alice hates New Zealand, and more, she has a stepfather. She struggles to find out who her true father was, for she looks like Len,her stepfather, but how can that be? Her mother claims that her father was killed during the war, but why had she never met her father's parents? Mrs.Fairchild then says, "It's a wise father that knows his own child," and Alice has to find out who her father was, and, more importantly, who she is. I loved this book because it offers wonderful insight into a girl's struggles to grasp a situation that's out of her control and find out who she is.