Video [Hardcover]

Janine Gagnon, or "Mean Janine" as she is known by some, has always believed that her popularity is the reason she's the first-picked in any game. In reality, all of her classmates are afraid of her cruel tongue and her tendency to play humiliating pranks. Eric Gooch, on the other hand, is a quiet, unassuming student whose parents' separation has forced him to switch from his private school into Janine's public junior high. Since their first meeting, Janine and Eric have hated each other. When their science teacher asks the class to observe one another for a semester and record their findings, Janine, in true character, decides to observe herself. At his teacher's prompting Eric agrees to observe Janine, but only if he can use his video camera and only if she doesn't know about it. Slowly, through the shifting perspectives of Eric's thoughtful observations and Janine's hurried ones, it becomes clear that Janine's arrogance is really a cover for her raging insecurity: "So I was a little flat-chested, and I didn't hang around the smoky school bathroom curling my eyelashes and glomming on lip gloss. Does that mean I didn't have any friends?" However, Eric's feelings of contempt remain until he observes Janine in a dangerous situation. When Eric steps out from behind his camera to help Janine, an unlikely alliance is formed between observer and observed that changes both of their perspectives.

Karen Romano Young has written a thought-provoking novel about how taking the time to look at people from a different angle can completely change your point of view. Young's unusual take on the confusing world of adolescent relationships will undoubtedly prompt teens to take a closer look at both themselves and each other. (Ages 12 to 15) --Jennifer Hubert

Young shifts gears from the lighthearted mood of her debut novel, The Beetle and Me, for this suspenseful psychological drama of an eighth-grade girl and the boy who surreptitiously observes her for a spring term project. The story opens with a third-person narration of a cryptic scene in which a fisherman moves his hands "so casually over his stomach and his hips." Most of what follows, in alternating first-person narratives, is Janine Gagnon's account of the events leading up to and following the incident, and classmate Eric Gooch's reports about Janine as the subject of his study as well as his thoughts about his own life. The author creates a compelling picture of Janine as a once popular girl, fallen from favor, and her simultaneous craving for solitude and attention. As her need for solace in the wetlands near her home increases, so does her exposure to the mysterious man who fishes there; Janine's budding adolescence lends credence to her confusion as she tries to sort out the man's intentions. Eric draws his own conclusions concerning the fisherman's behavior, and his confidence in his deduction serves as the catalyst for the climactic confrontation between Janine and the fisherman. Unfortunately, the ending itself may not be wholly credible to some readers, and the third-person narrative passages that open each chapter tend to distract more than move the plot forward. But Young has once again created believable, likable characters and demonstrates a versatile range in her writing. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Grade 6-9-Eighth-grader Janine Gagnon is a bully whose overbearing personality causes her to alienate all of her childhood friends. She finds peace and comfort only in her visits to the local wetlands. The story takes off on a positive note, drawing readers into the lives of a number of characters, including mean Janine and her classmate/neighbor Eric. A spring assignment to observe a fellow student is the catalyst that sets in motion a number of events that lead up to the story's climactic ending. Janine elects to observe herself, thus allowing her to explore her feelings toward her family in which she feels like an outsider, and toward friends who have grown away from her. It isn't until she meets a biologist studying the wetlands that she ceases to look inwardly and decides to observe the scientist. Eric's observations of Janine let him see the changes in her bullying ways. When a fisherman exposes himself to Janine, the beauty and enjoyment of her refuge are shattered and she begins to feel threatened by the man's presence. Eric finds out her secret and devises a plan to capture the pervert on video and take the evidence to the police. Readers may have a hard time believing Janine's angry confrontation with the fisherman, but the behavior rings true to her character. In a sincere and sympathetic manner, Young explores a girl's insecurities in a coming-of-age novel that tackles issues of sexual perversity, lasting friendships, and personal and emotional growth.
Janet Gillen, Great Neck Public Library, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Young shifts the point of view with masterly precision in a story in which a teacher presents a terrific assignment to his eighth-grade "Whole Learning" students: observe a real person throughout the term and keep a notebook of observations. Small, fierce Janine is used to popularity and power, and she responds badly to her friends' discovery of cheerleading and boys. Eric, newly arrived at school with a broken leg and his parents' broken marriage, is marked by Janine as a classic dweeb. He loves to study weather and uses his video camera in surprising ways. The key of the story is an experience many girls will recognize and remember with a shudder: seeing a man expose himself. How Janine deals with the experience and with the man's efforts to sully a place in the wetlands she loves, and how her classmates, including Eric and her siblings (each a fully formed, engaging person), come together to capture the offender and protect Janine, are only the brightest pieces in a compelling story about kids making real choices about how to live and what they want to become. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Romano (The Beetle And Me, p. 638) uses a nonlinear narrative and multiple points of view to paint a challenging, perspicuous character portrait. Clinging stubbornly to the illusion that her elementary school clique hasn't left her behind for new interests and alliances, tough, bossy Janine leads a solitary life, standing alone at the bus stop in the morning, shoehorning her way into conversations at school, and poking around a marshy old mill pond in her free time. For an assignment designed to sharpen observational skills, Janine opts to keep a record of herselfunaware that she is also being watched by Eric, a new classmate with the same assignment, a broken leg, and a ready video camera. Although the cast is large enough to cause occasional confusion, Romano's teenagers reveal themselves without resorting to tedious self-analysis. Janine, whose utter lack of social skills will not win much sympathy from readers initially, comes to realize that there are other ways to communicate besides browbeating, and shows her mettle in a genuinely frightening climax, courageously (if foolishly) launching a furious verbal attack on a fisherman who has been masturbating openly at the isolated pond. In a compelling show of solidarity, neighbors and police race to back her up, led by Eric, who catches the whole encounter on tape. Unflinching, well told, rich in character. (Fiction. 13+) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When Mr. Lincoln gives his eighth-grade class an observation project, it sounds roll-your-eyes dumb to Janine and Eric. Especially since Janine can't come up with anyone interesting to observe and Mr. Lincoln won't let Eric record his observations with his ever-present video camera. It isn't until the nail-biting climax of this provocative story, when Janine is in real danger from a stranger who has insidiously slipped into her life and mind, that she and Eric discover that they both chose to observe the same person. Entries from their observation notebooks spur this finely crafted and chilling novel to a conclusion that will leave readers with a new perspective on what it can mean to watch, to look, to observe, to see.

When Karen Romano Young was growing up, she and her sisters and brother spent most of their time exploring the wetlands down the road. The mill there was home to a woman who taught her about the wetlands and only once yelled at her for destroying frog eggs by stepping on them. These days the author lives near a marsh full of frogs in Bethel, Connecticut, with her husband, three children, two guinea pigs, a dog, and a cat.In Her Own Words...

"My first published writing was a poem called My Secret Place. I wrote it in fourth grade, and it appeared in my local paper and in a book of 100 poems written by children in our school district. The place in the poem was a shady spot under trees, but more important was what I did there: write!

"I've kept a diary since I was nine, and as a child I wrote poems and stories and lots of letters. If I wasn't writing, I was reading. Everyone around me read-to themselves, to each other, to me. My grandmother has this saying framed on her wall: "Richer than 1, you will never be, for I had a mother who read to me." I'll add to that: My mother took me to the library-the Fairfield Children's Library in Fairfield, Connecticut, where I grew up. Once I was too old to have a child's card, I even worked there, looking after the picture books and children's novels all the way through high school and even on vacations home from my school, Syracuse University.

"Part of my college education was a semester in England, where I did an independent study of storytelling and folklore (especially, different versions of "Rumpelstiltskin") that took me all over the country reading and telling stories to children. At the end of college my English boyfriend, Mark Young, immigrated, and we got married in Connecticut.

"My first job was writing for Scholastic's news magazines-the ones kids use in their classrooms to learn about the news and lots of other things. What a cool job: interviewing all sorts of people, doing tons of research, writing on a very short deadline. It was hard and colorful and lively and exciting, and I spent every day in New York City. I had gone to college to learn to be a teacher-but now I was hooked on writing for a living and never went back to teaching.

"After our daughter Bethany was born, I decided I didn't need a New York office--or even a spot under the trees--to be able to write. I stayed home and worked in the spare bedroom. I wrote for all kinds of children's magazines, covering everything from rock climbing to rocket science.

"Around the time Sam was born, I began writing nonfiction books. I've written about so many different things, but I especially love writing about people and all the different ways they live their lives: high-wire artists, Arctic scientists, a lady who tap-danced across the Golden Gate Bridge, and a man who walked all the way around the world.

"When Emily was born, writing time was tight. But I had lots of time to think. During high school I had written a picture book called The Blue Volkswagen. Now I began thinking about where that old Beetle might be these days. One day I took the kids to the library. Outside, a woman was selling prints of her photographs. One of them showed an old Beetle sitting in the doorway of a barn. I bought it, took it home, and began writing a story in the twenty minutes a day I had to myself. I didn't write about my real self or about anything that had really happened to me, but I tried to think of my story as I would have felt or acted if I were Daisy living in that farmhouse at that time. After The Beetle and Me came Video, and more and more stories after that.

"My husband, children, dog, cat, guinea pigs, and I have a small, noisy, weird house in the Connecticut woods. Our lives are full of books, and we all read every chance we get. I write everyplace: in the kitchen, in the car, in the barn, in the school parking lot, in the Reading Room at the New York Public Library, at the beach. I write and write and write...."