Slacks for Ella Funt

This was definitely the kind of book that tends to win children’s book prizes: a young woman overcomes hardships to complete her education. This one won the Printz Award from the American Library Association. The prizes, generally voted on by librarians, tend to favor books in which the young hero or heroine has to overcome some sort of hardship (death of a parent, poverty, slavery, the Holocaust, or some combination). I guess they’re meant to be inspiring, but they’re not a lot of fun to read.

I enjoyed this one more than some—the protagonist was an interesting character, and her uncertainties about what she wanted for her future made it more suspenseful. However, each chapter begins with a “word of the day” that she picks for herself, and that device felt too gimmicky for me.