The New Girl (Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls #2)

Cabot, Meg. Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls: The New Girl. Scholastic, 2008. Tr. $15.99 ISBN 978-0-545-04049-5.

What’s it about?

Being the new girl is not easy, as Allie Finkle, the new girl at Pine Heights Elementary, can attest.  While she makes new friends, one scary enemy, the biggest, toughest girl in the fourth grade, Rosemary Dawkins, makes life difficult for her.  

Find out more:

Allie Finkle is the new girl at Pine Heights Elementary, and while she loves her new teacher, Mrs. Hunter, and her new friends, Caroline, Erica and Sophie, who love to play the same games she enjoys, a bully, a big, tough girl named Rosemary Dawkins, teases her and threatens to beat her up. While Allie dodges Rosemary, and seeks out advice on how to deal with her from her friends and the adults in her life, she and her family are still adjusting to their new home. When Grandma comes to visit from out of town and sees that the family hasn’t received their stove yet, she orders them another one—but not the one Allie’s parents want. Feeling unappreciated, she storms out and goes to Allie’s Uncle Jay. Fortunately, Grandma’s ruffled feathers get smoothed out, and Allie gets exciting news—she finally gets to take home her new, prematurely born kitten Mewsette.  Allie’s mind is on taking care of Mewsie, so she lets her guard down regarding Rosemary. Following the advice of the janitor Mr. Elkhart, she begins to look at Rosemary in a new light.

The New Girl is a better book that the first Allie Finkle book Moving Day. The characters are more complex, and Allie is portrayed as a more thoughtful and mature kids than she was in the first book. The relationship between Allie’s grandmother and parents is interesting because it is a tense, complex relationship. The grandmother seems to have plenty of money and not a lot of patience. She expresses her frequent displeasure in passive-aggressive jibes. For instance, she tells Allie’s mother, “Don’t you look shapely, Elizabeth,” and when she hears Jay will meet them later, at dinner, she says, “Undergraduate students who are in their sixth year of taking poetry classes always have very important work to do, indeed.” She has a softer side, however, helping Allie care for her new kitten. By the end of the story, Rosemary turns out to be more complex than expected as well. The New Girl is a good exploration of friendship, bullying, and family relationships. This is a great book to hand to younger tween girls.  Allie is easy to relate to for this age group, because she is not a little girl, and still a long way from her teen years. Developmentally, she is beginning to form her own identity separate from her parents. She is actually mortified when her parents and grandmother come to her spelling bee, but she is still young enough to enjoy using her imagination in a make-believe battle between Queens and an evil warlord.

Genre: Humor, Friendship Fiction, Contemporary Realistic Fiction

Reading level: 5th grade

Interest level: Grades 3-5

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

Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking

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: Friendship, Rules, Family, Grandmothers, Bullies, Kittens

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

Caroline—A new friends of Allie’s—the smartest girl in fourth grade

Sophie—A new friend of Allie’s—pretty and in love with “Prince Peter”

Erica—Allie’s friend and next-door neighbor—a spirited gymnast

Jay—Allie’s uncle, who is studying poetry in college

Kevin—Allie’s youngest brother, obsessed with pirates

Mark—Allie’s younger brother, obsessed with dirt bikes, bugs and sports

Mrs. Hunter—Allie’s new teacher

Rosemary—Allie’s classmate—a bully who taunts Allie and threatens to beat her up