To Be Mona

Eastman, Kelly. To be Mona. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2008. 218 pp. Grades 9 and up. Mona is the most perfect girl in school. Her hair is perfect, her face is perfect, her acceptance speech as class president is perfect. And Sage wants to be just like her. Sage is the daughter of the town crazy woman, who drove away Sage's real father when she was only four years old. They live in near-poverty, and Sage desperately wants to keep her family secrets secret. Her lifeline is her next-door neighbor and best friend Vern Goldberg, and his supportive family, who have often wanted to move away but have stayed in order to provide Sage with some approximation of a normal family life. Sage is happy enough with her lot until Roger, school jock, hunk and eventually controlling jerk, comes into her life, and she decides that he is what she really wants. Sage reinvents herself. She has her hair highlighted and she changes her makeup and loses weight. She turns her back on Vern and many of the things that are important to her. This is the story of a young girl seeking to find her true self, and facing her personal demons of her mother's bipolar disorder and her abusive relationship with Roger. Eastman is quick to inject her own opinions about politics and psychology into the story and this can sometimes distract the reader, but for the most part this book is a well-told and poignant tale of an unhappy girl becoming a woman who has the power to change her own life for the better.

I loved the book To be Mona. Author Kelly Easton takes a young girl who lives in a difficult, dysfunctional family who wishes she was someone else - actually she wishes she was Mona. Mona is the popular girl - and Sage would givea anything to be her. To be Mona is an honest and sometimes painful book to read. Sage, who has not had a luck of happiness and joy in her life is overlooked by almost everyone around her - she feels invisible and as she focuses more and more on her insecurities, she focuses more and more on the "wonderfulness that is Mona". It seems to Sage that Mona's life is so wonderful and easy. Easton does a great job of contrasting the reality of Sage's life with the imagined wonderfulness of Mona - someone once told me "not to compare my insides with someone's outside" and I kept thinking about this as I read this book. I also enjoyed the fact that Sage does have some friends in her life and they seem quite dedicated to her - and that ultimately, Sage will come to discover that maybe, after all, she is not the "LOSER" that she thinks she it. This book is a must read for all teenagers who are comparing themselves to the "popular girls" (I think that covers about 90% of the girls in high school).

A wonderful and entertaining story that reads quickly as you follow the insecurities and yearning of a teenage girl and her unhappiness with herself. She fantasizes becoming like the perceived "cool kid" while she struggles with the realities of growing up poor, in a disorgazined family with a bi-polar mother. As a therapist, I can tell you that this is a must read for any teenager living with a parent with serious emotional or alcohol problems. It will give them hope, faith and understanding and help them to live their lives in the face of such sadness and frustrating difficulties. They will feel that they are not alone and better understand their feelings and be inspired to choose a healthier course for their own lives.

Sage just wants to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl. But that's kind of difficult when she has an eccentric mother who can't keep a job. This means they have hardly enough money to get by, and she has clothes from the Salvation Army. Then she decides to change. She wants to be more like Mona, the popular girl. She wants popularity. She wants Roger Willis to notice her. She wants her mother to be normal. Can she get what she wants? Or will she lose her friends in the process? And in the end, will she know what it's like "to be Mona?" This book was pretty amazing. I was hooked from the very beginning. Sage was funny and I really liked her. I loved how, by the end of the story, Sage knew she couldn't pretend to be something, or someone, she wasn't. So the story also has a good lesson in it. I definitely recommend TO BE MONA. It was a fast and fun read, and you'll really enjoy it! Reviewed by: Ashley B