Synopsis
Jerry Spinelli's beloved character, Stargirl, returns and reflects on time, life, Leo, and of course love. What happened to Stargirl? A year has passed and Stargirl returns to reveal her new life. Taking the form of, as Stargirl calls it, "the world's longest letter," Stargirl tells her story in a journal/diary. Going from date to date, Stargirl mixes memories of her bittersweet time in Mica, Arizona, with involvements with new people in her life: Dootsie, her five-year-old "best friend"; Alvina, combative tomboy-turning-girl; Betty Lou, sage agoraphobic; Arnold, who wanders town in a solitary game of hide-and-seek; Margie of Margie's Donuts, self-proclaimed "World's Best!"; Charlie, who spends his days in a folding chair at the grave of his wife Grace; and Perry Delloplane, who lays his own claim to Stargirl's heart.
VOYA
One of Spinelli's most memorable characters returns her to tell her own story. Nearly a year after leaving Arizona and Leo Borlock behind, Stargirl, homeschooling again in Pennsylvania, is trying to get past her high school experience. Unable to forget her love for Leo, she writes him the world's longest letter and shares her life without him. In her debut novel, Stargirl was magical, as alien as her fellow students thought her to be. In this book, she is both as extraordinary as expected and surprisingly real. Readers who loved her as the free-spirited object of Leo's conflicted affections will see the heartbroken but enduring Stargirl as a friend, a character to whom they can relate. Spinelli fills the novel with unforgettable characters-six-year-old Dootsie, agoraphobic divorcee Betty Lou, and Alvina, a fierce and confused tween. The other teens in the novel regrettably are the least interesting. Perry, perhaps the boy who will replace Leo in Stargirl's heart, is an alleged bad-boy, with a fan club of bright, funny girls, but he, like Leo, is never so spectacular that readers can understand the fascination. Although the letter format adds little to the story, this book completes the touching and inspiring story of Spinelli's beloved heroine, and readers who have been unable to forget her in the seven years since she appeared are sure to be eager to meet her again.