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Rules for Secret Keeping

by Lauren Barnholdt
280p. 978-1-41698-020-9.
COPY ISBN
Gr 6—8—Samantha Carmichael is being featured in You Girl magazine as one of the tween finalists for Entrepreneur of the Year for her secret-passing business. Then she starts Somerville Middle School where the rules seem to have changed overnight. She must contend with technology and competition in order to keep her business alive and her personal life secure. In the meantime, she must learn to trust her friends and family lest they find out her secret. Barnholdt does a good job keeping readers interested in the life of a middle school girl and the drama that surrounds it. She incorporates modern technology, fashion, popularity, and boy/girl concerns into her narrative, which will be a hit with the audience. The plot and subplots drive the story forward. Barnholdt does a good job letting tweens know that they too can be entrepreneurs.—Sherry Rampey, Gaston Branch Library, SC
Middle schooler Samantha runs a secret-passing business: kids put anonymous notes in her locker and she delivers them, unread. The system works well until Samantha finds herself the go-between for her crush and another girl. The realistic ways the protagonist works out her problems with boys, friends, and family fleshes out the rather meager plot.
Reviewed by Sherry Rampey , Jan 01, 2011

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