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Title details for American Girls by Alison Umminger - Available

American Girls

by Alison Umminger
Jennifer Grace
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
She was looking for a place to land. Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl slouching toward adulthood, and she's had it with her life at home. So Anna "borrows" her stepmom's credit card an runs away to Los Angeles, where her half-sister takes her in. But LA isn't quite the glamorous escape Anna had imagined. As Anna spends her days on TV and movie sets, she engrosses herself in a project researching the murderous Manson girls-and although the violence in her own life isn't the kind that leaves physical scars, she begins to notice the parallels between herself and the lost girls of LA, and of America, past and present. In Anna's singular voice, we glimpse not only a picture of life on the B-list in LA, but also a clear-eyed reflection on being young, vulnerable, lost, and female in America-in short, on the B-list of life. Alison Umminger writes about girls, sex, violence, and which people society deems worthy of caring about, which ones it doesn't, in a way not often seen in YA fiction.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 7, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781501931345
      • File size: 264822 KB
      • Duration: 09:11:42

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 920
    • Text Difficulty: 4-5

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 28, 2016
      Tired of being the “leftover” of her parents’ divorce and eager to disappear after a prank goes too far, 15-year-old Anna uses her stepmother’s credit card to buy a ticket to Los Angeles, where her sister Delia, a struggling actress, lives. Surrounded by Hollywood’s beautiful and morally corrupt, Anna navigates interactions with Delia’s ex-boyfriend, Roger, who is shooting a movie about L.A. murders, and her sister’s current love interest, a writer on a kids’ show, as well as her own blossoming romance with a teen actor. Forced to pay back the money she stole for her flight, Anna takes a job researching the Manson girls for Roger. Her immersion into the Manson murders leads to paranoia when it appears that Delia is being stalked. Debut author Umminger’s humor is biting (“My family was clearly the place where optimism went to die”), yet it reveals richly complicated relationships among mothers, daughters, and sisters. Umminger crafts a Los Angeles both glittering and soulless, leading to Anna’s realization that she may have more in common with the Manson girls than she thought, but it’s the choices she makes that set her apart
      . Ages 13–up. Agent: Neeti Madan, Sterling Lord Literistic.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Jennifer Grace embodies the cynicism of 15-year-old Anna, who certainly has a right to her 'tude. Her mother and stepmother are raising a new baby, and Anna feels invisible, at best. So she "borrows" a credit card, flies to Los Angeles, and surprises her half-sister, Delia. As Anna turns a jaded eye on the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle, Grace adds wry humor, but she also expresses Anna's sensitive, fearful side as she attempts to understand the girls who committed the Manson murders. As those young women become more real to her, Anna sees her similarities to them, acknowledges brutalities in her own life, and develops a more mature view. Grace does a magnificent job of balancing horror and humor in this gripping coming-of-age debut. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:920
  • Text Difficulty:4-5

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