I have to admit, it has been a long time since a book made me cry. Maybe I was all cried out? Maybe I was just reading really crappy books. Either way - I guess I wasn't quite sure what to expect when picking up the book, When Life Gives You O.J. by Erica Pearl. I guess perhaps I was thinking it was going to be an odd sort of 'make the best of what you have' story. Instead, I found a heartwarming story of the new girl in town. Zelly isn't just the new kid, she also looks different than all of the other people in her new town. Everyone in her small town in Vermont has blonde hair and blue eyes... she has a crazy brown 'fro; talk about feeling like you don't belong.
After moving into town in the spring when her grandmother, Bubbles, passed away,
she makes one good friend, Allie, before the school year ends and her new friend goes off to camp. Left all alone, Zelly feels like the only thing that will make her feel less lonely is if she either gets a letter from her friend at camp or gets the dog she has been asking for forever. When they lived in Brooklyn, Zelly understood why they couldn't have a dog. Now that they live in Vermont, if she can't look like everyone else, perhaps she can have a dog just like everyone else in town.
Her grandpa, Ace, comes up with a great plan for how to show her parents how responsible she is by taking an old orange juice jug and treating it as if it were the dog she has always wanted. At first it just seems silly, but when she meets a new boy in town (who looks just like her), he convinces her to take it seriously. I will let you guess what she names her 'practice dog'.
All goes well until Allie returns with new camp friends and Zelly begins to feel like a dog isn't worth all of the ridicule she is facing.
All goes well until Allie returns with new camp friends and Zelly begins to feel like a dog isn't worth all of the ridicule she is facing.
Throughout the book, Zelly is a great example of what life is like when you are the new kid - especially when you don't quite fit in with your surroundings. The interactions of Zelly and her grandfather show both love and the understanding that comes as a child grows older and realizes that adults have feelings too; that point in each persons' life when they realize that the world doesn't revolve around how they feel and what they are doing. The loss of Bubbles has affected Zelly deeply, but it isn't until she realizes how much her grandfather misses his wife that she begins to understand what life might be like for her 'crazy' grandfather.
Will all of her hard work pay off? You will just have to read to find out, but enjoy the fun and frustration until you get there.
