Jana to the Rescue

One of the deeper more interesting Jana stories. Jana is one of several students who is paired up with a new student who happens to be unfortunate enough to be homeless. Poor Liz Flagg and her struggling mother have lost their trailer home in a fire on top of Ms. Flagg losing her job suddenly. This has forced the Flaggs to move to Bridgeport. Ms. Flagg, unable to find a good job in Bridgeport, is forced, with her two daughters to stay in a homeless shelter. Liz, as a result, is thrust into the highly social, very middle-class, very appearance-conscious Wakeman and she feels completely lost and frightened. Just going to class and dealing with the other students is so overwhelming for her that she retreats into a mostly stony silence. Bubbly, outgoing, popular Jana tries to pull Liz out of her shell and tries a little too hard to "cheer" her "up", figuring that all Liz needs is to join some activities and to socialize more with the other kids. But the harder Jana tries, the more Liz resists and as a result, Liz had several angry outbursts, which take Jana aback. Complicating matters more is that no one in the front office alerted Jana and the other Wakeman buddies that many of the homeless students would have emotional problems and would sometimes behave strangely. Even the intelligent, insightful Whitney Larkin is at a loss as to how to handle her buddy, Leslie, who is practically mute and won't look at anyone. Adding even more difficulties to these homeless students' lives is that some of the more narrow-minded Wakeman students make some judgmental nasty remarks to these kids, which hurt them deeply and cause them to withdraw even more. Even Jana and her boyfriend, Randy, are rather critical of Liz's unkempt hair and cannot understand why Liz is reluctant to remove her jacket and make a few rude remarks behind Liz's back, which seemed stupid to me; homeless shelters do not make it easy to have clean hair or a neat appearance. I was glad to see Whitney and Jana and the other buddies pay a visit to Ms Brenner and that Ms Brenner finally did explain the homeless students' odd behaviors. I myself found myself gaining insight as to how awful it is to be a homeless pre-teen and to what agonies Liz was suffering from. It is only when Liz challenges Jana to come stay at the homeless shelter in an argument that Jana gains an inkling of what Liz was going though and why Liz was so withdrawn and hid behind a rude-seeming shell. The night at the shelter was very moving and touching and we see that Liz has lots of potential. The descriptions of the bleakness of the shelter and the cheerless conditions were very well depicted; Betsy did a good job there. It was very easy for me to see why Liz could not just "cheer up" so easily and why Liz was too overwhelmed to join much of anything or carry on any kind of normal middle school social life. I cheered at the end when Liz' mom, through her perseverance, gets a good job and she and Liz and her

Jana Morgan is honored and excited when she's one of the two kids picked out of her entire 7th grade class to be a buddy to a homeless kid coming to Wacko. But her hopes of making a new friend are dashed when she gets a load of Liz Flagg, the homeless girl she has to be a buddy to. Grouchy Liz seems to have built a wall around herself that even friendly, sweet Jana can't get through. But Jana Morgan is not one to give up so easily- when Liz says Jana couldn't take living in a homeless shelter, Jana takes her up on it and finally starts to understand why Liz is such a tough nut to crack. I don't won't spoil anything, I just want to say that I really, really loved this book and I think it's one of the best in the whole series!! I don't know how people can't like Jana- she's such a sweet, terrific person and she really tries to understand people. (Okay, maybe not Laura McCall and Taffy Sinclair! ;-) Jana and her boyfriend, Randy, have some sweet moments in this book, too, that I thought were cute! If you possibly can, read this one!! You won't regret it!! =)