Get Real
By Betty Hicks
Recommended for Grades 5-8
Adoption, family, and true friendship are the subjects of the book Get Real, by Betty Hicks. The author combines these themes with humor and adventure to tell the tale of two best friends trying to understand their families and relationships. Their story should appeal to teens and pre-teens who are themselves adoptees or to those who have ever found themselves wishing they could have different parents.
Dez and Jil are best friends in high school. Dez likes things neat, organized, and elegant. Her eccentric mom and dad, along with her energetic little brother, make her home life messy and chaotic. Dez is so different from the rest of her family that sometimes she even wonders how she could possibly be related to them. She envies Jil her neat, luxurious home and seemingly perfect adoptive parents. Dez doesn’t understand why Jil so desperately wants to meet her birth mother, Jane. She can’t comprehend why Jil wants to spend more and more time with Jane and Penny, Jil’s half sister, when this behavior obviously hurts her adoptive mom and dad very much. The two girls drift apart over this issue for awhile, but events and a somewhat dangerous adventure conspire to bring them back together. Dez and Jil both finally come to understand what it is that makes a parent “real.”
Get Real is the April selection for the Mother & Daughter Book Club at the library. One copy of the book is available in the KPL Youth Department in the Junior High Fiction section. Another copy can be found in the Young Adult room in the fiction section.
Reviewed by Laura Abbott
KPL Youth Department Clerk
By Betty Hicks
Recommended for Grades 5-8
Adoption, family, and true friendship are the subjects of the book Get Real, by Betty Hicks. The author combines these themes with humor and adventure to tell the tale of two best friends trying to understand their families and relationships. Their story should appeal to teens and pre-teens who are themselves adoptees or to those who have ever found themselves wishing they could have different parents.
Dez and Jil are best friends in high school. Dez likes things neat, organized, and elegant. Her eccentric mom and dad, along with her energetic little brother, make her home life messy and chaotic. Dez is so different from the rest of her family that sometimes she even wonders how she could possibly be related to them. She envies Jil her neat, luxurious home and seemingly perfect adoptive parents. Dez doesn’t understand why Jil so desperately wants to meet her birth mother, Jane. She can’t comprehend why Jil wants to spend more and more time with Jane and Penny, Jil’s half sister, when this behavior obviously hurts her adoptive mom and dad very much. The two girls drift apart over this issue for awhile, but events and a somewhat dangerous adventure conspire to bring them back together. Dez and Jil both finally come to understand what it is that makes a parent “real.”
Get Real is the April selection for the Mother & Daughter Book Club at the library. One copy of the book is available in the KPL Youth Department in the Junior High Fiction section. Another copy can be found in the Young Adult room in the fiction section.
Reviewed by Laura Abbott
KPL Youth Department Clerk
