The Cheetah Girls: Wishing on a Star
Galleria and Chanel, two fourteen year old girls, enter Fashion Industries High School. They live in New York City. 
While being online in a chat room, Galleria gets to know a girl called Dorinda, who will also enter Fashion Industries High School. So they become friends with Dorinda. Chanel Simmons, her nickname is Chuchie, is a blend of Dominican and Puerto Rican on her mother’s side, Jamaican and Cuban on her father’s side. She lives in Soho. Her mother Juanita is divorced and now has a new boyfriend from France. Her dad also has a new girlfriend. Galleria Garibaldi is also biracial. Her father is an Italian garment manufacturer from Bologna. Her mother, a former model and now boutique owner and designer, is African American. Dorinda lives with a foster family and her skin color is black. Together with two other girls, Anginette and Aquanette, who are African American twin sisters, the three girls form a girls’ band called The Cheetah Girls. They all love singing and by the way they want to beef up their cash flow.
I must admit that I didn’t like the book very much, because I couldn’t identify with the girls in the story. Galleria, who lives on the Upper East Side of New York City, seems to be quite a wealthy girl, because she wears designer clothes – Gucci and Prada, eats Godiva chocolate, has a computer and a telephone in her own bedroom, has a poodle which can make use of several grooming services, etc. You realize in the way she behaves that she is wealthy. Chanel, Anginette and Aquanette also seem to have enough money. Only Dorinda doesn’t have lots of money and has to give the money she earns with The Cheetah Girls to her foster family.
I didn’t like the book, because I don’t like the characters very much. The emphasis is put on designer clothes, money, style, good looking, good reputation and being adored by other people. 
The girls are friends with each other, but their interaction is mainly based on labels and good clothes. If anyone doesn’t wear nice and expensive designer clothes, the girls complain about it and try to figure out ways how all the girls could dress similarly. Friendship is not based on values we normally associate with friendship. The girls often criticize each other and quarrel about things like the selection of songs.
What one has to take in consideration, though, is the fact that especially Galleria and Chanel get very much influenced by their mothers, who were once models and are also very much interested in expensive clothes and money. Chanel’s mum, for example, has now a French boyfriend, who seems to have much money, and Juanita thinks that “he might be her ticket to the Billionaire’s Ball” (Gregory 9). Here you realize that not love is in the center of their relationship but money. Maybe the girls don’t know anything else, because they are so much influenced by their parents.
The only thing I liked about this book was the forming of The Cheetah Girls Club, because you realize that the girls want to fulfil their dreams and try everything to make their dreams come true. A lot of girls at the age of fourteen have dreams about their future and lots of girls want to become actresses, musicians or models. The Cheetah Girls really have the power to make something out of their lives as singers and give children hope to be able to do so too.
Anne of Avonlea
Plot
Anne of Avonlea follows the Anne of Green Gables book and deals with the life of the sixteen to eighteen year old Anne Shirley.
Anne teaches at Avonlea School, but still she doesn’t stop studying at home with her friend Gilbert, who is also a teacher at the nearby White Sands School. New characters appear in the second Anne book, like her new neighbour, Mr. Harrison, who has a parrot. First Anne doesn’t get along with 
him, but later on she becomes a real friend of the somehow problematic neighbour. First everybody thinks he is a bachelor, but then his wife returns and they start living together again. Further very important new characters are Dora and Davy, the children of Marilla’s third cousin. Dora is the good and well-behaved girl who never does anything wrong. Davy, however, is the opposite. He makes a lot of foolish things and really gives Marilla and Anne a hard time. But still, he is loved by the two women. When their mother dies, Marilla adopts them, and Anne cares for them as well. The book also introduces many of Anne’s schoolchildren, like Paul Irving, who seems to have the same imaginative skills as Anne has. Therefore they get so well along with each other. Paul really loves his teacher Anne and even spends time with her after class. Paul Irving is an American boy who lives with his grandmother in Avonlea. After 25 years his father, who comes to visit Paul in Avonlea, meets Miss Lavendar again, with whom he was engaged once. Anne is the responsible person for the re-meeting of the two people. Finally, the lonely lady gets engaged with Paul’s father again, and they marry.
One really important aspect of the novel is the founding of theAvonlea Village Improvement Society A.V.I.S. Anne and many of her friends take part in the society and try to make Avonlea a better and nicer place to live. Unfortunately, not all improvements are made very easily and the society has to struggle with some defeats.
Why I loved Anne of Avonlea
Again, I loved reading the Anne of Avonlea book, because even though Anne seems to be more grown-up, she still has characteristics of a child. 
When she is together with Diana or when she is alone, she imagines all kinds of different things again. Therefore, she loves it to spend time with Paul Irving, the schoolchild, who sometimes lives in an imaginative world too. She still makes a lot of mistakes, like selling her neighbor’s cow having mistaken her for her own or getting stuck in a broken duck house roof. But one realizes her adolescent characteristics as well. She becomes more mature and less spontaneous. She really tries to fulfill her adult responsibilities and wants to make good children out of her schoolkids and her new siblings Davy and Dora. While Anne more adjusts to society’s expectations, Davy represents the non-conformist in the novel. He makes many mistakes and gives Marilla and Anne a hard time. But especially this makes the novel funny to read, and Davy reminds the reader of Anne. She made a lot of mistakes when she came to Avonlea, but still she was loved by Marilla and Matthew. Davy is loved by Anne and Marilla too, even though he makes a lot of troubles.
Anne is a girl who really wants to live in a decent and nice community. Anne wants to live peacefully with her neighbors. She even wants all her school kids to love and adore her, although it’s not always easy to make all people love you. She works hard to fulfill all the people’s needs. Her friends and Anne have founded the A.V.I.S in order to make Avonlea a better place for all people to live. Anne is really concerned about her fellow-human beings, and I really appreciate that. Even though she didn’t have an easy childhood till the age of eleven when she was adopted by Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, she is very concerned about the well-being of her friends and family.
She is a really admirable person and gives girls but also adults the possibility to identify with and relate to her. I really look forward to reading other Anne novels, but now I simply don’t have time to read books for me for pleasure. When I’m back at home in Austria, I’ll get some further books and tell my friends of the fascinating red-haired and freckled Anne Shirley.
Anne of Green Gables
The coming of age novel Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery is a Canadian classic. It was written in 1908 and was first published in the United States and in Great Britain.
Plot
Anne, the main character of the novel, is an eleven year old orphan who gets adopted by Marilla and Mathew Cuthberts, two middle-aged siblings, who actually wanted to adopt a boy from the asylum in Nova Scotia to help them with their work on their farm. 
But as there were some misunderstandings, little Anne Shirley is waiting at the train station to be taken to her new home. Finally, the Cuthberts decide to accept little Anne.
Anne is a skinny girl with very red hair and freckles in her face. Although she is eager to please, she is dissatisfied with her name and her outward appearance. She hates her red braids and her freckles in the face. Anne is simply not like the other girls at the age of eleven. She is a very special girl with an enormous imagination who takes much joy in life. She loves her new home called Green Gables, which is situated on Prince Edward Island in Canada.
After describing how Anne tries to adapt to her new home and her new family, her education and her friends Diana Barry, Jane Andrews, Ruby Gillis and her not-yet friend Gilbert Blythe play major parts in the story as well. Anne hates Gilbert Blythe, because he has teased her about her red hair. Anne is very sensitive when it comes to her hair and from that time on she simply detests him even though he tries to apologise several times. Even when Anne realizes that she doesn’t hate him anymore, she simply doesn’t admit that and lets everybody in the belief that she cannot stand Gilbert.
The book also deals with the many adventures Anne has with her friends and on her own. The adventures are not always positive, because Anne makes a lot of mistakes during her way growing up: She dyes her hair green and even makes her best friend Diana drunk.
The last chapters of the novel deal with Anne and her friends Ruby, Josie, Jane and also Gilbert going on to Queen’s Academy. There Anne gets her teaching license in one year and even wins the Avery Prize in English. This prize would make it possible for Anne to pursue a degree at Redmond College.
Unfortunately, Matthew dies towards the end of the story, Marilla’s eyesight gets worse, and so Anne decides to refuse the Avery Prize to stay at home with Marilla. Instead of going to college, she wants to teach in the near of her hometown. Gilbert, who actually has been nominated to teach at Avonlea School, refuses to work there, because he wants Anne get the job. When not teaching at school, Anne can stay with Marilla and support her on the farm. This is start of a very close friendship between Gilbert and Anne Shirley.
Why I loved Anne of Green Gables
I really loved reading the novel Anne of Green Gables, because I was so fascinated by the character of Anne Shirley. 
She is a girl who takes so much pleasure in small things in her life, even though she had a hard life before she came to Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. Her mum and dad died when Anne was only three months old. Anne then lived with Mrs. Thomas and her drunken husband for eight years and had to look after the four kids of the couple. One day Mr. Thomas died when falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and her children. But she did not want to take Anne, and so Anne was taken by another woman called Mrs. Hammond. Mrs. Hammond took Anne, because she was “handy with children” (Montgomery 40). Again Anne had to look after eight children. After two years Mr. Hammond died, and Mrs. Hammond divided all her children among her relatives. She didn’t want to care for her kids anymore. But no one took Anne, and so she had to go to an asylum. But there they didn’t accept her either, because they were overcrowded. Finally, she went to Mrs. Spencer, who then sent her to the Cuthburts.
This story of her childhood really made me sad. It has to be awful for kids not being accepted and loved by their family. But even though Anne had to have a very hard, poor and bad childhood till she came to the Cuthburts, she is a girl that takes so much joy in life. Even the smallest things make her happy. When Marilla rides with Anne to Mrs. Spencer to give Anne back (sounds like a present that you want to return), Anne says, “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy this drive. It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly. I’m not going to think about going back to the asylum while we’re having our drive. I’m just going to think about the drive. Oh, look, there’s one little early wild rose out! Isn’t it lovely? Don’t you think it must be glad to be a rose? [...]” (Montgomery 37).
Even though I had a very good childhood, I could relate to Anne and her feelings when no one loved her. As I could feel with her and relate to a lot of things she said and did, the book really appealed to me.
Anne is such a joyful character. She gives readers, who are maybe coping with problems and struggling with life, hope. She is able to make readers feel positive and confident again. Anne has certainly become a role model for many girls who just want to be like Anne Shirley.
But not only did I feel with Anne, I could also a little bit identify with Marilla. In the beginning she was quite harsh to Anne and never showed or told her that she loved her. I kind of hated her behavior. I often thought, “Come on Marilla, tell Anne that you love her. She is only eleven. Children make mistakes, need to be punished, but also need to be told that they are loved.” Therefore I really liked Matthew who could more easily show that he liked and adored Anne. Only towards the end of the book after Matthew has died, Marilla tells Anne that she loves her.
“We’ve got each other, Anne. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here-if you’d never come. Oh, Anne, I know I’ve been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe-but you mustn’t think I didn’t love you as well as Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It’s never been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this it’s easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood and you’ve been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.” (Montgomery 296)
This sentence really touched me and I felt much more sympathetic to Marilla after her statement.
The topics that were covered in the book really appealed to me since I’m a very emotional person. Family life, childhood, girlhood, friendships and communities exactly meet the needs I’m searching in books.
I can just recommend: Read Anne of Green Gables and you become a more satisfied person again and will take more joy in your life.
Nancy Drew Girl Detective: Without a trace
Nancy Drew, who is still living with her father Carson Drew and her housekeeper Hannah Gruen in River Heights, is a classic and timeless girl detective, who seems to have endured through the 1930s to today. This book was written in 2004. Imagine!!! Still she is a very smart, independent and resourceful sleuth, who always seeks for economic justice and who always likes to see the best in people. As she is able to solve all the mysteries happening in River Heights, she is very popular and common among her best friends Bess and George and her boyfriend Ned Nickolson. In the original texts Nancy was 16. In the book Without a Trace she is already 18. Again she is motherless since the age of three (in older texts since the age of 10), and so she is very close to her father Darson Drew, who is a famous lawyer in River Heights. He has a very good reputation and this comes very handy during many mysteries Nancy Drew has to solve.
Nancy has to solve two mysteries in the book Without a Trace. She has to find out who is running through gardens in River Heights and stomping all the people’s zucchini. Moreover, she has to find out who has stolen the gorgeous Faberge egg, a precious family heirloom, from Simone Valinkofsky, a new French resident of River Heights.
While trying to solve the mysteries, she gets supported by her two best friends Bess and George and by her boyfriend Ned Nickolson. Bess Marvin and George Fayne are cousins, but are two very different characters. Bess is a very pretty girl, who is very boy crazy and enjoys it if boys are admiring her. She is very stylish and clothes and makeup play an important role in her life. Still she can do a lot of things that you would expect boys to do, like fixing up her own car and diagnosing a damaged gasket or a blown engine from a mile away. George, however, is quite the opposite. She is very athletic and tomboyish and doesn’t care much about fashion and makeup. She really likes computers. Nancy falls in the middle. She doesn’t care about fashion the same way as Bess does, but still wants to look good when she meets her boyfriend. But she is more in mysteries than in fashion, and this we get to know when she meets Nick in the movie theater. Nancy arrives too late, because she has spent too much time dealing with the two cases and so she hasn’t had time to fix her hair. A short, thorny branch is hidden in her hair that probably got in when she was in Simone’s overgrown garden. This shows that she is more interested in mysteries than in her looks. The following paragraph also shows that she is not very interested in makeup and fashion.
“As I hung up the phone I couldn’t help being slightly relieved that Bess wouldn’t be coming by to play fashion consultant. It would give me more time to continue my investigations.” (p. 67)
And Nancy hardly ever wears skirts, although she is a girl. She wears a skirt for the party at Simone’s place, but she doesn’t feel very comfortable and blames the skirt first for her accident that happens at the party.
I liked this book best of the three I have read so far, because Nancy tells the whole story in the first person and seems to be more ‘real’ than in the other mystery novels, because she is not only perfect. So I could really easily identify with the girl sleuth. I also liked the roles her friends Bess, George and Ned played in the story, because their characters were described very well throughout the whole story. You could easily figure out what roles they play in Nancy’s life. Although Nancy is very engaged in solving the mysteries, she accepts and even needs the help of George, Bess and her boyfriend Ned, which is one main reason what makes Nancy so attainable to me. Some scenes in the book show that Ned tries to help Nancy taking important clues into account, like when they were in Susie Lin’s restaurant and talked about the two cases. “Something about what Ned had just said made me think of something else”. (p. 53). Nancy describes Ned as not being into mysteries the same way as she is, but he’s more than smart enough to follow along when she’s in full hypothesizing mode. Ned seems to be a very patient guy and enjoys having such a smart girlfriend.
The friendship between Nancy, Bess, George and Nick makes the story very believable, because also in reality most people would need their friends’ or other people’s help when solving mysteries or other problems.
Furthermore, in comparison to the first novel I read, “The secret of the old clock”, this story was much more thrilling, because you had to read the book until the end if you wanted to know who the egg’s thief was and who had stomped all the vegetables in the neighborhood’s gardens. I didn’t want to stop reading the book, because I wanted to know who the culprits were and this fact kept me reading.
