Memoirs of a Bookbat

Grade 6-9-In a problematic story with a cast of disappointing, one-dimensional characters and a plot that misses the mark, Harper Jessup, 14, hides her love of books and reading from her Christian fundamentalist parents. Told as a flashback as she runs away to a grandmother in Georgia, the girl reflects on her life. When her unemployed, angry father and desperate, placating mother find comfort and financial reward in the church, they embark on careers as missionaries for F.A.C.E.(Family Action for Christian Values) and F.I.S.T.(Families Involved in Saving Traditional Values) and take to the road in a spiffy recreational vehicle to preach the gospel of book censorship. Meanwhile, Harper continues her secret life of reading, her only solace. When the family finally settles in California, she makes a too-good-to-be-true first friend, and he helps her make her escape when her parents and the church encourage her younger sister and a friend to write an anti-Semetic letter to JEWdy Blume and force the girls to become active in an anti-abortion campaign. For a person so immersed in reading and ideas, Harper never questions the fact that her parents' religious involvement is more monetary than spiritual. Compared with the fundamentalist family and church members in Lois Ruby's Miriam's Well (Scholastic, 1993), whose actions are a constant testament to their deep, abiding faith, Harper's church and family are unconvincing. Just as the girls are manipulated by the adults around them, so readers are manipulated through this heavy-handed anticensorship tract.