The Vinyl Princess

( 12 )

Overview

Summer is here, and 16-year-old Allie, a self-professed music geek, is exactly where she wants to be: working full-time at Berkeley’s ultra-cool Bob and Bob Records. There, Allie can spend her days bantering with the street people, talking the talk with the staff, shepherding the uncool bridge-and-tunnel shoppers, all the while blissfully surrounded by music, music, music. It’s the perfect setup for her to develop her secret identity as The Vinyl Princess, author of both a brand-new zine and blog. From the safety...

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The Vinyl Princess

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More About This Book

Overview

Summer is here, and 16-year-old Allie, a self-professed music geek, is exactly where she wants to be: working full-time at Berkeley’s ultra-cool Bob and Bob Records. There, Allie can spend her days bantering with the street people, talking the talk with the staff, shepherding the uncool bridge-and-tunnel shoppers, all the while blissfully surrounded by music, music, music. It’s the perfect setup for her to develop her secret identity as The Vinyl Princess, author of both a brand-new zine and blog. From the safety of her favourite place on earth, Allie is poised to have it all: love, music and blogging.
      Her mother, though, is actually the one getting the dates, and business at Allie’s beloved record store is becoming dangerously slow—not to mention that there have been a string of robberies in the neighbourhood. At least her blog seems to be gaining interest, one vinyl junkie at a time….

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Editorial Reviews

VOYA - Kathleen Beck
Allie loves living in Berkeley, California, and working at Bob & Bob's vintage vinyl record store on Telegraph Avenue. Except for lifelong best friend, Kit, however, her social life is practically nonexistent. So Allie starts a blog to see if she can build a community of fellow music geeks—there must be some, right? Meanwhile she distributes her "Vinyl Princess" zine to Bob & Bob's patrons, watches the denizens of Telegraph, and helps her mom through the mysteries of Internet dating. Things are definitely looking up when cool, green-eyed Joel shows an interest in Allie—until a robbery at the store, when she recognizes his voice behind that ski mask. Doesn't anyone just want a cutting-edge girl with an encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth-century music? Allie is an appealing character—funny, balanced, and passionate about music. She views her somewhat erratic, divorced parents tolerantly and begins to see possibilities in fellow music lover Zach, even though he gives her a mix CD, "the mating call of the romantically challenged." The people in her life are sometimes a shade too colorful (grandmother Estelle is a case in point), and for nonfans the lists of music may get overwhelming, though the compulsion to check out the songs is strong. Don't download, though—Allie would definitely not approve. This book is a winner. How can you not like a character who has spiked hair, travels by skateboard, and correctly uses the subjunctive? Reviewer: Kathleen Beck
Publishers Weekly
Prinz (the Clare series) is the cofounder of the independent music store chain Amoeba Music, and her latest novel has all the props of the trade. School’s out and 16-year-old Allie, aka the Vinyl Princess, is working at Bob & Bob’s Records in Berkeley, Calif., for the summer—a quintessentially dingy haven for music geeks, anti-downloaders, and street freaks. Over the span of three months, she attracts the attention of a roguish mystery boy she calls “M,” witnesses a robbery, shepherds her divorced mom through the perils of online dating, finds her soul mate, and starts a vinyl listeners–only blog/fanzine (“Corporate rock still sucks; downloading is harmful to music and other living organisms. Music is love”). While Allie’s personal dramas are entertaining, what makes the book stand out is her encyclopedic, cross-genre knowledge of bands, songs, and albums, beyond the usual suspects. References to the old-fashioned but still cherished mix-giving ritual will be appreciated by music connoisseurs and novices alike. Allie’s song lists are an education in themselves—they’re worth a listen and this is worth a read. Ages 12–up. (Jan.)
Children's Literature - Jody Little
Sixteen-year old Allie is spending her summer working at Bob and Bob Records in Berkeley, California. As a music lover and collector of vinyl records, Allie decides to start a blog and print a zine using her secret identity, The Vinyl Princess. In addition to all the regular customers and the usual street characters near Bob and Bob Records, the summer brings in some new people including Zach, who instantly irritates Allie, and a mysterious, handsome man whom Allie calls "M." The summer becomes more complicated as Allie's mom begins dating a man she met on-line. Then Allie's best friend, Kit, begins to wonder if her boyfriend is cheating on her. To make matters worse, a string of robberies has begun in the neighborhood of Bob and Bob Records. When the mysterious "M" asks Allie to go out for coffee with him, she jumps at the opportunity and learns his name is Joel. Just as Allie believes Joel is really interested in her, Bob and Bob Records is robbed. Allie hides during the break-in, but hears the voice of one of the robbers. It is Joel. Reluctantly she goes to the police and admits what she knows. Ultimately, Allie learns that sometimes the person you are meant to be with is the one you least expect. Even though the plot is simple and predictable, the terrific first person narration, the well-developed characters, and the layering of famous songs and musicians make this book a fun read, particularly for music-lovers. The book includes the first "Vinyl Princess Zine." Reviewer: Jody Little
School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up—Sixteen-year-old Allie's life revolves around music. By the time she was 12, her vinyl collection had grown to 900 albums. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the music she listens to and writes about in a printed fanzine and a blog, both of which take off slowly and then become wildly successful. She has the perfect job at Bob & Bob Records on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where the bins are filled with new and used CDs and used vinyls. Despite the store's proximity to the UC Berkeley campus, college students are not a large part of the clientele, since they've been lured away by the free downloads scorned by Allie and other true audiophiles. Her friend Kit's seemingly limitless supply of male admirers leaves Allie wishing for at least one romance of her own, so she is delighted when a new customer asks her out for coffee. This bubble bursts when a string of robberies finally hits Bob's and Allie recognizes a familiar pair of boots on one of the ski-masked hold-up men. Kit sensibly helps her decide whether or not to inform the police and to deal with the disappointment that her date was merely a setup for information about the store. Soon Allie discovers that romance is sometimes waiting in unexpected places. Filled with local color and a skillfully drawn cast of eccentric characters, this novel will appeal to music lovers, romance fans, and those seeking an upbeat, satisfying read.—Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA
Kirkus Reviews
Allie is devoted to musicians in every genre, as long as their tunes were pressed onto vinyl. Her blog and fanzine channel her obsessive theories, enthusiasms and knowledge, all fueled by her job at Bob & Bob's, a legendary and now fading record store on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue. On the side, Allie goes undercover with best friend Kit to prove that Kit's rocker boyfriend Niles is a faithless jerk, handles her mother's re-entry into the dating scene with grace and humor and nurses a serious crush on M, a newcomer who turns out to be extremely dangerous. Allie's blogging success helps her move from a cantankerous intolerance for iPods to an age-appropriate adoption of the digital-culture tools that help her keep her beloved music alive. Once past the exposition-heavy first chapters, Allie's voice grows appealing and authoritative, while other missteps-blog posts are wrongly called "blogs," and what self-respecting music snob would omit Johnny Marr's tenure in Modest Mouse from a sentence cataloguing his long career?-are annoying, but ultimately trifling quibbles. A modestly successful debut for indie music retailer Prinz. (Fiction. YA)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061715839
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 12/22/2009
  • Pages: 313
  • Sales rank: 1,378,519
  • Age range: 13 years
  • Lexile: 850L (what's this?)
  • Product dimensions: 5.70 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

YVONNE PRINZ is the author of several books, including the Clare series and The Vinyl Princess, which won the California Library Association’s John and Patricia Beatty Award, was shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction and was named to Resource Links’ Year’s Best of 2010 list. A Canadian living in San Francisco, she is the co-founder of Amoeba Music, the world’s largest independent music store.

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 12 )
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Sort by: Showing 1 – 10 of 12 Customer Reviews

  • Posted January 14, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    Reviewed by Cat for TeensReadToo.com

    How does a self-proclaimed music geek with encyclopedic knowledge of vinyl's history survive in an MP3 obsessed, Billboard Top 40 world? If you're sixteen-year-old Allie, you spend every free moment "practically running" Bob & Bob's Records, comb the flea markets of Berkeley for classic LPs, while composing articles for your blog and zine.

    Not that any of this means Allie's without a life - thank you very much. She spends plenty of time patronizing the bohemian eateries and coffeehouses populating downtown San Francisco, hanging with best friend and vintage fashion maven Kit, and keeping an eye on her scatterbrained mother as she reenters the dating scene.

    Should Allie let her mother's personality-transplant-for-a-boyfriend, or twenty-something stepmother Kee-Kee's pregnancy, send her into a tailspin? Of course not!

    Who cares if Bob & Bob's owner keeps threatening to sell the store? He's been saying that for years.

    And why worry too much about a series of robberies plaguing businesses along Telegraph Avenue? With regulars like Allie keeping their eyes peeled for anyone suspicious, the police will catch the thieves sooner or later.

    So what if Allie hasn't found a boyfriend of her own? Sure, she's got her eye on the mystery hottie "M" who's recently become a customer, but it's not like she expects to stumble across her musical soul mate at work...right?

    I *LOVED* this book with a blinding passion! Everything from Allie herself, to her eccentric family and kooky coworkers, the descriptions of food, the plethora of music history and the way Yvonne Prinz infuses the city of San Francisco with so much life and vivacity, it becomes a character in and of itself. Even though I'm an iPod devotee, I got a kick out of Allie's references to MP3s and downloading as "the end of civilization as we know it."

    THE VINYL PRINCESS is hip, blunt, quirky, and just plain fabulous - if books were people, I'd marry this one. Seriously guys, this is one you shouldn't miss.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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