If she wears the wrong dress, will he think she’s a baby? If she orders the wrong thing to eat, will that reveal how unsophisticated she still is? Will she ever know the right thing to do?įifteen is a wonderful book for anyone who remembers what it was like to be young and nervous and inexperienced and for anyone who remembers what it was like to not quite know yourself yet. Because every word she says – everything she does – now hovers on the brink of being a startling social gaffe. But instead of being happier and having all of her problems work out, she is now in crisis all the time.

And he is polite and sweet and older, and all the other girls look at Jane with new awareness. She meets him in an awkward babysitting moment and fantasizes about him. He’s older – at least sixteen because he drives-and so handsome with gray-green eyes and a cute dip in his brown hair. Then one day she meets Stan, Stanley Crandall, the new boy in town. Unless you count baby parties that she goes to with George, a family friend who is shorter than she is and only interested in his rock collection.

She babysits for extra money, and she has plenty of time to do it because she doesn’t have a boyfriend or even date much. She is average not a glamorous girl-woman like Marcy or an intellectual like Liz. All of a sudden it is painfully clear that she, her parents, her friends, her house, and her clothes are all unbelievably lame. She is in the midst of a crushing discovery. Jane Purdy is fifteen and desperately desirous of a boyfriend. It’s all there – the waiting by the telephone, the careful decisions of what to wear and say and do, as well as the wondering if maybe you could walk by his house and accidentally run into him without being completely obvious.

Despite the lengthy time gap between then and now, all of the feelings, thoughts and actions still ring true. First published in 1956, it’s the story of first love and all of its painful thrills. When you’re in it, it absorbs you, and when you’re past it, you never quite forget.īeverly Cleary paints a vivid portrait of this in her book, Fifteen. It’s a time of an enormous breadth of feeling breathless excitement, staggering humiliation, quivering expectancy. There is something about adolescence, those teenage years, that marks you and leaves its brand for life.

Fifteen book by beverly cleary