The Contest

With her hyperactive imagination, Rosy is reminiscent of our beloved carrot top.

The Contest is a fast-paced and provocative portrayal of a determined young girl who faces challenges every day. Young readers will cheer her resourcefulness, her willingness to go after what she wants and her compassionate spirit.

The Contest is a fast-paced and provocative portrayal of a determined young girl who faces challenges every day. Young readers will cheer her resourcefulness, her willingness to go after what she wants and her compassionate spirit.

This delightful novel is full of adventures, upsets and fun.

With her hyperactive imagination, Rosy is reminiscent of our beloved carrot top. She treasures her family’s rare treat of PEI potatoes, likening their dirt to pixie dust. Her interactions with Lydia, a friendly fellow competitor, are evocative of the friendship between Anne and Diana. Just as Anne is sometimes lovingly baffled by Diana’s flightiness, Rosy compares Lydia’s hard-to-read persona to the unreachable bottom of a ketchup bottle. The Suspense surrounding the look-alike contest is palpable and will propel a young reader through this book in a sitting or two. The Contest will find an audience with middle-grade Anne admirers.

Part Mohawk though she may be, Rosy’s spirit and spunk are assuredly akin to Anne’s own. She is a charming heroine with a quirky and delightful cast of characters surrounding her, and her determination to enter the contest and willingness to work hard to get there are inspiring…This is a lovely addition to Second Story Press’s Gutsy Girl series.

This delightful novel is filled with adventure, upsets and fun as Rosy plans her contest win. As she and Lydia become friends, the drama and suspense increases. The many characters in the book are well portrayed and the fast-paced story will keep young readers interested. Race and poverty versus wealth issues are interwoven into the plot as the girls prepare for the contest finale. Providing much food for discussion, this story could be am interesting novel study. Listed as part of the Gutsy Girls Series, it should be a popular addition to an elementary school library and is highly recommended.

I didn’t guess the outcome of the story’s crisis [...] I was afraid it would veer closer to Pollyanna-ish-ness than Anne-ish-ness, but Caroline Stellings did good.

Although there are themes in here that I find a little tough to swallow, I have nothing but praise for this book. Yes, there are stories of broken families and strained friendships. However, I felt that author Caroline Stellings summarized the moral of her story well by concluding that Anne didn't care about wealth, prestige or position. She merely wanted to be loved and to belong to someone. Stellings hit the nail on the head both with Montgomery's Anne and with this book.