Your Friend in Fashion, Abby Shapiro

Gr 5—7—Doll-loving Abby Shapiro lives in late-1950s Massachusetts with her extended family. In an effort to earn enough money to buy both a bra and a Barbie doll, the 11-year-old decides to turn her fashion designs into a lucrative business, and therefore goes about writing letters to Jacqueline Kennedy, "Possible Future First Lady," whom she considers a potential client. Abby shares her fashion ideas with Mrs. Kennedy, along with the trials of living with her abusive father, navigating friendships, rocky relationship with her mother, planning her Bat Mitzvah, and becoming more aware of politics and civil rights. The author draws on her own childhood memories as inspiration and imbues her first-person narrative with a vivid sense of time and place. A Yiddish/Hebrew glossary and fashion drawings complement this first novel. A good choice for readers seeking historical fiction set in a world not too unlike their own.—Laurie Slagenwhite Walters, Baldwin Public Library, Birmingham, MI