First Impressions
Grade 6-8–When straight-A student Alice, 15 and the middle child in a family of five, gets a C+ for misinterpretingPride and Prejudiceas a tragedy (based on the plight of middle-child Mary Bennett), her teacher allows her to redo the paper over Christmas break. As Alice rereads the book, she begins to see Mary and herself more clearly and starts to make some much-needed changes to her paper and her life. Sachs summarizesPride and Prejudicefor an audience who wouldnt be familiar with it by having Alice imagine herself and her new boyfriend in key scenes. This creates some awkwardness as the device repeatedly disturbs the flow of the main story. Stilted dialogue and pedestrian prose make it seem that the characters are going through the motions, never really coming to life.–Adrienne Furness, Webster Public Library, NYCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.