fine lines
Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'Deenie', the 1973 story of a girl whose newly set back proves only a minor setback.
My mother named me Deenie because right before I was born she saw a movie about a beautiful girl named Wilmadeene, who everybody called Deenie for short. Ma says the first time she held me she knew right away I would turn out the same way—beautiful, that is.
Oh, how I wanted to look like the girl on this cover. She might be the only cover girl I ever wanted to look like, actually. (Those legs! That skirt! That SWEATER!) But kudos to the cover artist for catching that Deenie Fenner is that rare kind of beauty, appreciated both by her high-school-age peers and by modeling agencies in NY—and one of the few female characters to whom the reader might relate to exactly as the other characters do: with admiration, jealousy, and an involuntary sense of possession.
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