Y.O!

Title: Feeling sorry for Celia
Author: Moriarty, Jaclyn
Publisher: London: Macmillan Children’s 2010.
Call number: Y English MOR

Elizabeth is the daughter of divorced parents. She is not having a good first week of school. She learns that her father, a pilot has just moved back to Australia from Canada for a year. Her mother, a high powered advertising executive, is so busy rushing from meeting to meeting that she only has time to communicate via Post-it notes left around their kitchen.

Elizabeth and Celia are best friends who grew up together. Elizabeth is the levelheaded, strong and independent one. Celia is the dreamer, the enchanting fairy-like one who is always scheming. Celia has run away to join a circus. Celia leaves Elizabeth alone to confront everything from pimples and forgotten homework to the death of a pet and a suicide attempt.

Eventually, Elizabeth learns to stop obsessing over thoughtless Celia and come to appreciate her own gifts. Her intelligence and sense of humor come through strongly in her letters to her mother and her friends.

She wonders if she will ever see her best friend again, if she will make the track team, if she will ever get a boyfriend and be a “real” teenager.
 

Author
Jaclyn’s first novel for young adults, Feeling Sorry for Celia, was an instant bestseller in Australia, America and the UK. She followed this up with the equally fantastic Finding Cassie Crazy and Becoming Bindy Mackenzie, and the brilliantly original The Spell Book of Listen Taylor.

Janice Ow
Librarian
Young People’s Services

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