Scan barcode
brandypainter's review against another edition
2.0
I was so excited when I stumbled upon this in the new arrivals section of the library. I typically love Lindsey Leavitt's books. I also typically love epistolary novels. This is should have been right up my alley. It is a wonderful concept. Two best friends find themselves only sharing one class in their first year of middle school so they exchange a notebook every day, writing back and forth about what their thinking and feeling. As they begin to try new things and make new friends, their friendship faces challenges. It is an age old story, but there is always room for a new one as new middle schoolers face this problem every year. The issue with this book is about 150 page too long. Many of the journal entries are rambling and could have used more editing. There will still be an audience for this book, but I was hoping to like it more myself.
rachelwrites007's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this book a lot, but I think the target audience will LOVE it.
sqeeker's review against another edition
4.0
- This is a really fun and cute book. It was a bit young for me, but I still enjoyed it.
- I loved the opening. It made me laugh.
- I really liked Piper and Olivia's voices and personalities. They were very believable tween girls. Robin and Lindsey did a great job capturing their younger selves.
- The story is fun, but there really isn't any plot or conflict til the very end. The middle is a little slow.
- The ending is really good. It is full of warm fuzzies and is all about compromising and being a true friend.
- I loved how visual certain parts of the book are. The girls tape things into their "notebook" and it is fun to see that. It is like the reader is actually reading the notebook of these two girls.
- This will be a fun story for my daughter to read when she gets a little older.
- I loved the opening. It made me laugh.
- I really liked Piper and Olivia's voices and personalities. They were very believable tween girls. Robin and Lindsey did a great job capturing their younger selves.
- The story is fun, but there really isn't any plot or conflict til the very end. The middle is a little slow.
- The ending is really good. It is full of warm fuzzies and is all about compromising and being a true friend.
- I loved how visual certain parts of the book are. The girls tape things into their "notebook" and it is fun to see that. It is like the reader is actually reading the notebook of these two girls.
- This will be a fun story for my daughter to read when she gets a little older.
lyndajdickson's review against another edition
4.0
Having just recently started middle school, best friends Piper and Olivia now find that they only have one class together. They don't even get to share lunch! The sparkly blue notebook becomes their lifeline - practically the only way they can communicate with each other. Unfortunately, the notebook ends up documenting the bittersweet breakdown of their best-friendship; we can literally see it imploding before our very eyes. It started out as something that would bring them closer together, but will the notebook end up tearing them apart?
This is an interesting concept for a book, with Lindsey Leavitt writing as Piper and Robin Mellom writing as Olivia. The authors channel their inner 11-year-olds and manage to give each girl a distinctive character and voice. Full of humor, cute notes, photos, school newsletters, blog entries, flyers, drawings, and even pelican poop, this book is absolutely charming.
A must-read for all middle school BFFs.
I received this book in return for an honest review.
Full blog post: https://booksdirectonline.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-pages-between-us-by-lindsey-leavitt.html
This is an interesting concept for a book, with Lindsey Leavitt writing as Piper and Robin Mellom writing as Olivia. The authors channel their inner 11-year-olds and manage to give each girl a distinctive character and voice. Full of humor, cute notes, photos, school newsletters, blog entries, flyers, drawings, and even pelican poop, this book is absolutely charming.
A must-read for all middle school BFFs.
I received this book in return for an honest review.
Full blog post: https://booksdirectonline.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-pages-between-us-by-lindsey-leavitt.html
suey's review against another edition
3.0
Cute fun story about girls who write in a notebook to each other. Yeah. What a great idea!! :)
bookishlybratty's review against another edition
2.0
It was cute...but it's not quite 3 stars or 2, so giving it 2.5 stars. Perfect for sixth grade girls...
theartolater's review against another edition
4.0
I read a YA book a while back called Finding Ruby Starling, which was a story about identity told through emails and blog posts. This idea is moved downward toward the middle grade set with The Pages Between Us, which is a story about friends mostly told between their letters in a notebook. Not the most unique way to tell the story, but still an engaging one nonetheless. The two girls, Piper and Olivia, are using the notebook to keep their friendship strong even though middle school is making it harder to be together, and does a realistic job of describing and dealing with the challenges of friendship as life changes around us.
Overall, a book that a lot of young girls will find extremely appealing. It's good, clean fun, and hits all the right notes along the way in what ends up being a solid read overall. Definitely closer to a 4.5, and I'd love to see more from this in a series.
Overall, a book that a lot of young girls will find extremely appealing. It's good, clean fun, and hits all the right notes along the way in what ends up being a solid read overall. Definitely closer to a 4.5, and I'd love to see more from this in a series.
fairytale42's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this! It was so cute, realistic, and they overcame their differences. A great read for middle-schoolers, or a cute one for older kids.
bre_hoeppner's review against another edition
4.0
Definitely a lighthearted book compared to all the other teen books out in the world. Was a very easy read and a good book to read in between other books.
mrskatiefitz's review against another edition
4.0
This is a review of both [b:The BFF Bucket List|23213151|The BFF Bucket List|Dee Romito|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1444310541s/23213151.jpg|42755711] and The Pages Between Us.
There are many middle grade novels about the changes lifelong friendships can undergo during the turbulent middle school years. Today's review focuses on two that take a slightly different approach. The girls in The BFF Bucket List and The Pages Between Us know their friendships may be endangered, so they take steps to strengthen their bonds and hopefully save their friendships from destruction. In The BFF Bucket List, Ella and Skyler are preparing to enter high school in the Fall. When Skyler starts making new friends, Ella worries that they will drift apart, so she makes a bucket list of fun things she wants the two of them to do together over the summer break. As they begin checking off items, however, both girls begin keeping secrets from each other which threaten the depth of their friendship more than any outside force. In The Pages Between Us, Olivia and Piper find themselves with only one class in common, so they start to keep a notebook, in which they can write notes to be passed back and forth in the halls between classes. When their quest to find the perfect after school activity to do together doesn't end as planned, however, their messages grow tense.
I appreciate the way both of these books shy away from the notion that friends must have an ugly fight and part ways when a major life change occurs. It's nice to have stories that show the power of friendship, and highlight ways that girls can proactively save their friendships from pettiness and cattiness. I am equally pleased that neither book portrays this as an easy thing to do, or even as something that is guaranteed to work. Not everything that happens in these books is 100 percent plausible, but their premises are firmly grounded in reality.
As a storytelling vehicle, the bucket list works slightly better than the notebook. While notebook novels are popular, The Pages Between Us gets off to an awkward start, with code names and a series of notes trying to fool potential prying eyes into thinking they have stumbled upon a French notebook. Kids are familiar enough with the notebook format that all of this seemed unnecessary, and the characters' personalities in those beginning notes seem completely different from what they are in the rest of the book. The other thing that felt inauthentic was the occasional inclusion of text messages and other digital correspondence in the notebook. Are we to assume these were printed out and pasted in? Would real kids do this? I had a notebook like this with a friend in eighth grade, before cell phones were a thing, let alone Smart phones, but I can't imagine that we would have printed out our emails and saved them. It just seemed odd.
The bucket list, on the other hand, includes some great feats, all of which are carried out in funny and touching scenes that are slightly unlikely but not entirely impossible to occur in real life. After a while, the story deviates a bit from simply crossing items off the list, so it doesn't necessarily serve as the framework for the story, but the idea of it will appeal to girls to the point that I could see some trying to make and complete their own lists.
Both books handle the introduction of new friends very well. Because the girls in both stories are indulging in new interests, they meet lots of new people all at once, but the authors of both books do a nice job of introducing these people using specific details that instantly connect the characters to their names and personalities in the mind of the reader. The secondary characters are a bit better developed in The BFF Bucket List, possibly because all of the characters begin spending time together so they all get more time in the spotlight. Both stories make great use of the secondary characters, however, when it comes to highlighting how each girl is changing. There is for the most part no meanness coming from the new friends toward the old ones. Rather, each girl drifts away from the friendship only in pursuit of her own dreams and interests and not because there is pressure from outside forces to ditch her best friend.
The BFF Bucket List is a definite middle school read, including all the concerns of teenage life, from choosing where to attend high school, to having a crush. There is no sexual content or anything like that, so there are no concerns about having a younger child read it, but the readers who will relate to it most are likely to be in seventh or eighth grade. The Pages Between Us is more likely to appeal to girls as young as third or fourth grade, and as old as sixth or seventh grade. Olivia and Piper's social awkwardness and dorkiness will appeal especially to fans of the Popularity Papers series.
There are many middle grade novels about the changes lifelong friendships can undergo during the turbulent middle school years. Today's review focuses on two that take a slightly different approach. The girls in The BFF Bucket List and The Pages Between Us know their friendships may be endangered, so they take steps to strengthen their bonds and hopefully save their friendships from destruction. In The BFF Bucket List, Ella and Skyler are preparing to enter high school in the Fall. When Skyler starts making new friends, Ella worries that they will drift apart, so she makes a bucket list of fun things she wants the two of them to do together over the summer break. As they begin checking off items, however, both girls begin keeping secrets from each other which threaten the depth of their friendship more than any outside force. In The Pages Between Us, Olivia and Piper find themselves with only one class in common, so they start to keep a notebook, in which they can write notes to be passed back and forth in the halls between classes. When their quest to find the perfect after school activity to do together doesn't end as planned, however, their messages grow tense.
I appreciate the way both of these books shy away from the notion that friends must have an ugly fight and part ways when a major life change occurs. It's nice to have stories that show the power of friendship, and highlight ways that girls can proactively save their friendships from pettiness and cattiness. I am equally pleased that neither book portrays this as an easy thing to do, or even as something that is guaranteed to work. Not everything that happens in these books is 100 percent plausible, but their premises are firmly grounded in reality.
As a storytelling vehicle, the bucket list works slightly better than the notebook. While notebook novels are popular, The Pages Between Us gets off to an awkward start, with code names and a series of notes trying to fool potential prying eyes into thinking they have stumbled upon a French notebook. Kids are familiar enough with the notebook format that all of this seemed unnecessary, and the characters' personalities in those beginning notes seem completely different from what they are in the rest of the book. The other thing that felt inauthentic was the occasional inclusion of text messages and other digital correspondence in the notebook. Are we to assume these were printed out and pasted in? Would real kids do this? I had a notebook like this with a friend in eighth grade, before cell phones were a thing, let alone Smart phones, but I can't imagine that we would have printed out our emails and saved them. It just seemed odd.
The bucket list, on the other hand, includes some great feats, all of which are carried out in funny and touching scenes that are slightly unlikely but not entirely impossible to occur in real life. After a while, the story deviates a bit from simply crossing items off the list, so it doesn't necessarily serve as the framework for the story, but the idea of it will appeal to girls to the point that I could see some trying to make and complete their own lists.
Both books handle the introduction of new friends very well. Because the girls in both stories are indulging in new interests, they meet lots of new people all at once, but the authors of both books do a nice job of introducing these people using specific details that instantly connect the characters to their names and personalities in the mind of the reader. The secondary characters are a bit better developed in The BFF Bucket List, possibly because all of the characters begin spending time together so they all get more time in the spotlight. Both stories make great use of the secondary characters, however, when it comes to highlighting how each girl is changing. There is for the most part no meanness coming from the new friends toward the old ones. Rather, each girl drifts away from the friendship only in pursuit of her own dreams and interests and not because there is pressure from outside forces to ditch her best friend.
The BFF Bucket List is a definite middle school read, including all the concerns of teenage life, from choosing where to attend high school, to having a crush. There is no sexual content or anything like that, so there are no concerns about having a younger child read it, but the readers who will relate to it most are likely to be in seventh or eighth grade. The Pages Between Us is more likely to appeal to girls as young as third or fourth grade, and as old as sixth or seventh grade. Olivia and Piper's social awkwardness and dorkiness will appeal especially to fans of the Popularity Papers series.