STARGIRL

Stargirl is aptly named. Not exactly from a different planet, she appears to be from a distant constellation. Selfless, meditative, and self-assured, she just drops from above, it seems, into Mica High School. John Ritter, as 16-year-old Leo Borlock, passes from fascination at this mysterious sprite, to love, anger, pain, humiliation, and finally back to a kind of love again, but only after it's too late. Ritter's reading pulsates with all the guarded passion and quiet graces of a young man in love for the first time. It is charged with Leo's energy, at other times wracked with his confusion. Always, though, it reverberates with the social upheaval that gentle Stargirl Caraway's free spirit sparks in the poisonously conservative atmosphere of Mica High. Leo never quite recovers after they collide, but both he and the listener are changed. Newbery medalist Spinelli once again reminds us how difficult but wonderful it is to be human. P.E.F. 2002 YALSA Selection (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 02]