The Year of Secret Assignments
by Jaclyn Moriarty (ages 13 & up)
Scholastic, Inc.
Emily, Lydia and Cassie, best friends since primary school, are students at Ashbury High, a private school in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. In an effort (some might say misguided) to improve relations between Ashbury and nearby, public Brookfield High, the girls English teacher has initiated a pen-friend program between Year 10 (sophomore) students in the two school. The girls are not amused.
After some initial misunderstandings, though, Lyd and Em are quite pleased with their pen-friends, Seb and Charlie. They each strike up a friendship with the boys they are writing to and there might even be some romantic leanings. Cassie, on the other hand, is having a very different experience. Matthew, the boy assigned to write to her, is insulting, hateful and threatening.
When Lyd and Em find out what Matthew has been doing to Cassie, they plot a campaign of discovery and revenge, recruiting Seb and Charlie to their cause. Of course, things don’t go quite they way they plan and soon Brookfield and Ashbury are in an all out war.
This is one of those madcap tales of misunderstanding, missed communication and (in Emily’s case) seriously misused vocabulary words. Think a modern The Importance of Being Earnest set Down Under. The entire story is told through a series of letters, diary notes, e-mails and schools announcements and Moriarty handles both the humor and the occasional serious moment with a sure hand.