Drama Queens in the House

Gr 9 Up—Life is pretty great for Jessie Jasper Lewis. Only 15, she's an early high school graduate, and her friends and family at the Jumble Players Theater surround her with their wacky hijinks. Jessie's theater family is throwing her a big bash for her graduation when her world suddently falls apart. She witnesses her father cheating on her mother with the costume designer, who is a man. This secret strains Jessie's relationship with her mother and causes her to question every relationship in her life. To make matters worse, when her father finally comes out, her aunt Loretta, a religious zealot predicting the end of days, severely judges Jessie's family and sends CLP (Church of the Living Prophesy) people to their door at all hours. The novel brings up several important questions of identity: What does it mean to be biracial? How does a teenager come to process and accept a homosexual parent? Unfortunately, unnecessary asides take readers away from the action—they do not reveal crucial information about the character or move the story forward. Ironically, there is too much drama in Drama Queens in the House in the form of too many characters with a mound of problems that lead readers away from truly connecting and caring about the protagonist.—Krishna Grady, Darien Library, CT