Fourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. Forced to wear mum's odd hand-made garments and forbidden from reading teenage magazines, they know they're different from 'normal' girls - but when dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it's like to have a little freedom.
Sent to a real school for the first time, Prue struggles to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young - and handsome -art teacher, Rax. They quickly bond, and Prue feels more and more drawn to him. As her feelings grow stronger, she begins to realize that he might feel the same way about her. But nothing could ever happen between them - could it?
I used to be friends with a thirteen-year-old girl, and for the purpose of privacy, we can name her Sam. She was not in the situation of Prue and Grace, she had been attending public school all her life, and even though she has her own personal problems, she was a pretty normal girl. She went on a school trip to Disneyland, Paris, about a year ago and went to Barcelona with the same group of people earlier last year, too. On these trips was a man, a youth worker I believe, who Sam gained this huge crush on and had convinced herself that he had a crush on her, too. He wasn't stupid, luckily, and had to report her to the school's safety workers just so that they could make sure she understood that her behavior towards the male teachers of the school was unacceptable - it wasn't just a crush with her, she flirted and gained attachments to them, too.
As a child, I loved this book. The romantic aspect is really what I was attracted towards, and although I don't have much memory from my childhood, I'm sure I must have had plenty of teacher crushes, at least when I was Sam's age. Saying this, now that I am eighteen and no longer a thirteen year old so I have somewhat matured since then, I am seeing this book from a different perspective, and what I see is disturbing.
Rax's behavior throughout the book was occasionally not right, but for the most part, I'm glad to see he had his head screwed on properly. He was so torn between doing what's right and what he wanted that he often ended up making the wrong decision.
I feel like Prue was a girl many teenagers could relate to, despite the fact she was clearly not your normal teenager, which perhaps was not only added in for entertainment and to have more plot then a teacher-student romance, but also added in just so that there's an excuse or a reason as to why a grown man would be attracted to a teenage girl.
In case you are reading this without having read the book, or you need a reminder, Rax had a family at home. A wife, two young children. Prue became obsessive and decided to be Rax's babysitter, also using the money she earned to buy things her parents never allowed, such as sexy underwear and teenage magazines. She stupidly bought her younger, unable-to-keep-a-secret Grace some treats, too, and that was pretty much how that secret was revealed. I know Prue was isolated, and therefore naive because her parents restricted the information that she was learning, but she reads a lot - you'd think she'd have learnt something about how relationships between big age differences is strongly frowned upon and that when it's underage it's illegal, and even when she was living with her younger sister and acknowledging she can't be quiet, Prue made the mistake in trusting her. Prue really isn't as smart as we're led to believe.
Even though this book was meant for teenagers (it's a YA, I believe), the wording of the book was patronizing and more meant for the eyes of someone younger. I wouldn't really let anyone younger then about sixteen/seventeen read this, though, because I believe that young people are very easily influenced and learn quickly from their surroundings and mostly the media. This book was pretty much saying that a student-teacher relationship is fine if you're different and the word 'love' is mentioned at some point, which it is not. I'm glad the book ended as badly for Prue as it did, hopefully sending them the message that "This is what will happen if you continue your feelings", but I'm a bit disappointing that Rax never received any serious punishment for what he had done, when if that kind of thing happened in real life, he would have probably had some serious charges.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my first Throwback Thursday post, next week is going to be be either another book by Jacqueline Wilson (most likely Kiss), or a book by Cathy Cassidy (I have different options for this, I kind of want to talk about Angel Cake just to bring up the topic of foreigners in your country and just to try to make people a lot less judgmental about that subject hopefully and other topics, or one of my favorites Dizzy/Lucky Star, I'm not really sure what one I'm going to pick if I choose Cathy Cassidy). Other writers I have in mind are J.K.Rowling, Michael Murpurgo, etc, so I think I can continue this for a while! Have a nice day.
