Veronica Ganz

I have read this book from the time I was a teenager and I have really enjoyed this book! Marilyn Sachs really has a gift for writing about the subjects she's chosen and this book really comes to life with the way Veronica Ganz is portrayed in this book! She's a tough customer! She won't tolerate ANYONE talking about her or her family and physically would get back at the girls yet it was hard for her to get back at the guys! The "shrimps": Sanford Feldman, Howard Tannenbaum and NOW, Peter Wedemeyer really fixed her good for any attempts to mess around with them! It showed the the size of the boy who put Veronica in her place didn't make any difference! Even though Veronica was bigger, she couldn't compete with these little guys who fixed her when she tried to tangle with them! They put Veronica in her place! Dawn E. Lowenstein

I read this as an insecure fourth grader. Like Veronica, I was clumsy and bigger than everyone else, so I was teased a lot. I admired Veronica and the way she never let anyone push her around. Kids were really wild growing up, and I wanted to be like Veronica; brave and strong, taking no guff from anyone! I thought it was cool the way the author attempts to show that women/girls aren't the weaker sex. All my life people told me that men are better than women, etc., and this book settled the score! Now when I think about it, it is a bit unusual for a bully to be female; usually female bullies might have been victims of abuse or something. Veronica comes from a broken home and she and her sister Mary Rose Ganz are from her mother's first marriage. In the 1940's when this story took place, divorce was unusual. Anyway Veronica lives with her mother, sister, and her stepfather and half brother Stanley, and Veronica feels like she has to stand up for herself and her family. It seems like their real dad is distant; they haven't seen him since they were babies, and all he does is send letters and money. And he apparently has always been breaking their hearts by saying that he's coming to visit and then cancelling at the last minute, anyway, Veronica says she couldn't care less but i think deep down it hurts her, and her sister is always crying and devistated over their father not coming. I think that's the cause of VEronica's behavior towards others, and i think she has a lot of anger inside. She gets irritate easily, and usually when she lets people have it, she is successful, until Peter moves to town, and he gives her heck and she chases him for months. It is neat the way the story ends, and I don't want to tell it and spoil it for anyone, but anyway another comment i have is that although i appreciate the way this book stands up for the female gender, i think it went a little overboard in that it sort of put men down by making them seem like wimps. I guess Veronica had a lot of problems being lonely and insecure and not having a father in the home, even though her stepfather was a nice guy. WHat bothered me was the way Veronica was always complaining about her stepfather and her mother always screamed at him. However,it was a totally awesome book and the author is cool and she has a point in all this!