{"id":2554,"date":"2007-04-16T20:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-16T20:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2554"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:26:25","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:26:25","slug":"cherry-popsicles-and-other-treats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2554","title":{"rendered":"Cherry Popsicles and Other Treats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 261px; height: 389px;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/160\/418424293_03791d0b57.jpg?v=0\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"10\" \/>A funny-sweet-tender novel about the horror formerly known as junior high, <a href=\"http:\/\/jennyhan.livejournal.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jenny Han&#8217;s<\/a> perfectly poised <a href=\"http:\/\/www.booksense.com\/product\/info.jsp?affiliateId=ReadersResponse&#038;isbn=9781416909427\" target=\"_blank\">Shug<\/a> is my new favorite junior high novel.<\/p>\n<p>One day when she was twelve, Annemarie Wilcox looked up and found out that she knew the perfect boy. After all, Mark was her best, best friend, the boy she&#8217;d been hanging around with since sandbox days, eating cherry Popsicles and talking about nothing in particular. For some reason, though, Mark is acting like a dork. He&#8217;s not tuning in to the clues that Annemarie is throwing down. I mean, how can he help but notice her? Instead, he asks, &#8220;Why are you always showing off?&#8221; &#8220;Why&#8217;d you have to say that?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Then, through a series of completely horrible incidents, &#8216;Shug,&#8217; (which her mother calls her after the strong and outrageous woman in <i>The Color Purple<\/i>) discovers that not only does Mark prefer his longstanding crush on her sixteen-year-old sister, Celia, Mark would rather look at her friend Elaine and make fun of her to Kyle, Hugh and Jack than have anything else to do with her.<\/p>\n<p>Life is <i>awful.<\/i> And confusing. And funnier than heck at times. Shug discovers that sweet boys can be found in the funniest places &#8212; sometimes just below the nasty-mean-tough exteriors of guys she&#8217;s hated forever.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s funny and fearless (at least on the outside!), and after reading her, you&#8217;ll wish you&#8217;d gone to junior high with super special <a href=\"http:\/\/www.booksense.com\/product\/info.jsp?affiliateId=ReadersResponse&amp;isbn=9781416909427\" target=\"_blank\">Shug<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A funny-sweet-tender novel about the horror formerly known as junior high, Jenny Han&#8217;s perfectly poised Shug is my new favorite junior high novel. One&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,14,21,5],"class_list":["post-2554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-girls-fiction","tag-middle-grade","tag-realistic-fiction","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3995,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554\/revisions\/3995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}