Jun 17, 2011 ARCHIVES | Entertainment | COLUMNS Libba Bray
Scholastic
ISBN 978-0439895972
NA pages
$18.99
Reviewed by Mary Quattlebaum
Take one beauty pageant, add pirates and piranhas, stir in a top-secret military operation, and you've got a shake-it-up, satirical novel by Printz winner Libba Bray. When the Miss Teen Dream plane crashes, the 14 survivors find themselves on a jungle island, a "thrumming heartbeat of danger wrapped in a muscular green." My stars! (as Miss Texas would say). But the girls gather their courage and remaining beauty products and are soon pumicing sticks into fishing spears and engineering weapons from stilettos and nail polish. The novel's shifting points of view allow insight into characters eager to buck stereotypes of beauty, race and female disposition, such as the "sassy black" sidekick and the plucky disabled girl. But will teamwork and friendship prevail even as frat-boy buccaneers loom on the horizon and secret operatives (and a giant snake) close in? The snappy dialogue, plot surprises and strut-their-stuff characters lend a playful but no less profound tone to Bray's theme of female empowerment.
Mary Quattlebaum teaches in the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her most recent children's book is "Pirate vs. Pirate."
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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