Allie Finkle is just nine years old, but she's convinced that the good part of her life is over. Her parents have moved her and her brothers from their moderately stylish home to a creaky old Victorian house in the weirdest part of town. Allie's adjustment to this pre-adolescent apocalypse is the subject of this exciting novel by Meg Cabot, best known as the author of the Princess Diaries.
Lauren Mechling
Though its tone is slightly younger than Cabot's books for teenagers, Moving Day still brims with vintage Cabot humor and inventiveness. There's the heroine's absurd swirl of know-it-all-ness and cluelessness ("I am older than Mary Kay by a month. Possibly this is why I don't cry as often as she does, because I am more mature. Also, I am more used to hardship, not being an only child") and the droll details that are effortlessly tossed off, like the little brother who dreams of having a bedroom with velvet wallpaper and the boy who gives Mary Kay this charming birthday card: "Too bad Allie's moving, now you'll have no friends at all. Happy Birthday!"
—The New York Times
Kirkus Reviews
Like every other kid lately, nine-year-old Allie Finkle is developing her list of rules for friendships, school situations, family and overall life. Dos and don'ts for any newly minted tween can get pretty complicated when an already unsettling relationship with a so-called best friend is augmented by one's parents' decision to sell their comfortable suburban dwelling and move to an un-renovated Victorian-style, 100-year-old gloomy and possibly haunted house in the city. And, what about the new (really old and crowded) school and a fourth grade filled with unfriendly faces? Allie is stressed but decides to take charge by hatching a scheme to prevent the sale of her suburban house and thus, the move. Cabot's endearing, funny and clever protagonist will have readers simultaneously chuckling and commiserating as succeeding chapters introduce individual "rules" for Allie to contemplate and accept. Lessons on friendship and fickleness, sneaky behavior, lying, animal cruelty and theft (although paying for a "rescued" pet turtle that was never for sale may raise some eyebrows) merge to create a humorous and heartwarming story. Allie's first-person voice is completely believable with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek wit. Despite the now-overdone rules concept, readers will eagerly await Allie's next installment in her new home, school and neighborhood. (Fiction. 8-11)
From the Publisher
Praise for Allie Finkle:"In Cabot's first foray into novels for kids who are still in single digits, her trademark frank humor makes for compulsive reading...Allie is funny, believable, and plucky." -Publishers Weekly, starred review"Your new rule? This book must be read...now!" -Discovery Girls"Meet the most likable heroine since Pippi Longstocking..." -Copley News Service"Allie will appeal to children who enjoyed reading about Ramona, Amber Brown, Junie B., and the other feisty girls found in beginning chapter books. This novel proves that the master of young adult popular fare is able to adapt her breezy style for a younger audience." -School Library Journal"Offering a new series for preteens, Meg Cabot brings her signature ear for dialogue to a younger group, and she gets 4th grade right." -Chicago Tribune "Cabot's winning tone and characterizations will make Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls a surefire hit with its target audience as well as parents who care to provide their children with role models you can't find in other media created for this age group. Long live Allie Finkle!" -Kidsreads.com"[Meg Cabot's] humor is warm and sitcom-pitch perfect. The New Girl continues Allie's reign as the new queen of tweendom." - Kidsreads.com"[B]rims with vintage Cabot humor and inventiveness." - The New York Times Book Review
AUGUST 2008 - AudioFile
Nine-year-old Allie Finkle loves rules. She writes rules like "never eat anything red" and "don't stick a spatula down your best friend's throat" in her "Rules for Girls" notebook. But when she loses her whiny best friend and then finds out her family is moving, all the rules change. Fear of the unknown and frustration with cliquey friends are just two of Allie’s concerns. Tara Sands’s high-pitched reading borders on the singsong, but she does well at portraying a youngster who is trying to understand change and formulate new rules. Sands is careful to harvest the emotions and humor that lie below the protagonist’s sarcastic comments. S.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
