Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Moving Day

Cabot, Meg. Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls: Moving Day. Scholastic, 2008. Tr. $15.99 ISBN 978-0-545-03947-5

What’s it about?

Allie Finkle has lots of rules, and one is that you don’t let your family move into a haunted house, where there might be a disembodied zombie hand in the attic! Will Allie succeed at saving her family?

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Allie Finkle loves math and science because they have rules—and Allie really likes rules, because that way, you know where you stand. Things like friendship are much more complicated. After getting into a fight with her weepy friend Mary Kay, she decides that she’d better get the rules of friendship in writing, and she creates “Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls,” where she records nuggets of wisdom like “you can never make a second first impression” and “don’t put your cat in a suitcase.”  Allie records lots of new rules when her parents announce they are moving to a decrepit old house that may be haunted. She is adamantly against moving, and finds ways to sabotage the move. She knows that if she behaves maturely, she will get a kitten, but her fears drive her to find ways to stop the move, even though she may have found a new group of friends that she can relate to, instead of the obnoxious and mostly fair-weather friends she has in her old neighborhood.  

Meg Cabot is a well-known author of chick-lit for teens, particularly the Princess Diaries series. The Allie Finkle series is Cabot’s first stab at writing for tweens. Allie Finkle is a memorable character, whose good intentions don’t quite match with some of her actions. In fact, she does some really bratty and potentially dangerous things, like setting up a booby trap with her rock collection to chase away potential buyers.  She redeems herself in other ways, such as confronting her classmate Brittany Hauser’s mistreatment of her beautiful Persian cat, Lady Serena Archibald. Cabot’s style is very readable and humorous, and Allie’s voice is believable.  This is a fun, entertaining read, and the portrayal of an intelligent girl’s methods of making sense of the rules of friendship and other gray areas is spot on. One criticism I have is the unconvincing portrayal of the parents. Allie’s bad behavior was essentially rewarded at the end of the book. Although she did a good thing by standing up for the cat, her other actions and sabotage of the move should have been punished, not rewarded. What sane parent gives their child a kitten after they’ve set up a dangerous trap that could have injured someone??  

Genre: Humor, Friendship Fiction, Contemporary Realistic Fiction

Reading level: 5th grade

Interest level: Grades 3-5

Reviews/Awards: Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly

Read alikes:

Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series

Paula Danizger’s Amber Brown series
Judy Blume’s Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great and the Fudge series

For a slightly older audience: Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself, and Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

For a slightly younger audience: Pennypacker’s Clementine series and Park’s Junie B. Jones series

Subjects: Moving, Friendship, Rules, Family, Fear, Treatment of Animals

Series information:
#1 Moving Day
#2 The New Girl
#3 Best Friends and Drama Queens
#4 Stage Fright
#5 Glitter Girls & the Great Fake Out
#6 Blast from the Past

Characters:

Allie Finkle—the nine-year-old protagonist with a penchant for rules

Mary Kay—Allie’s cry baby off and on best friend at Allie’s old school

Brittany Hauser—a bratty, volatile classmate whose mistreatment of her cat boils Allie’s blood

Erica—a potential new friend at Allie’s new school

Courtney—a genuine friend of Allie at her old school

Jay—Allie’s uncle, who is studying poetry in graduate school and has a great TV, but little elkse in his apartment