Maureen
Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes is a charming young adult fiction
novel about self-discovery, the willingness to take a risk, and an incredible
adventure that will change Ginny’s life forever. It was published in 2005 by HarperCollins
Publishers.
Ginny
Blackstone is your typical teenager.
She’s shy and reserved, and she’s convinced that the only time she’s
ever been interesting is when she’s with her Aunt Peg, a starving artist
constantly traveling the world. When her
Aunt dies of cancer, Ginny feels the only interesting part of her has died too,
until she receives a letter from her aunt and consequently discovers the 13
little blue envelopes her aunt had written before she passed away. In the first letter is $1000 for a plane
ticket to London and a set of rules:
Rule #1: You
may bring only what fits in your backpack. Don't try to fake it with a purse or
a carry-on.
Rule #2: You may not bring guidebooks, phrase
books, or any kind of foreign language aid. And no journals.
Rule #3: You cannot bring extra money or
credit/debit cards, traveler's checks, etc.
Rule #4: No electronic crutches. This means no
laptop, no cell phone, no music, and no camera. You can't call home or
communicate with people in the U.S. by Internet or telephone. Postcards and
letters are acceptable and encouraged.
The rules
were simple to follow, and soon Ginny is off to London on a path of
self-discovery that will change her life forever. Those thirteen letters send Ginny off on a
journey across Europe, from London to Greece and everywhere in-between. In each letter Ginny must complete a task
before moving on to the next letter, and Ginny has to decide if she’s still
going to believe her aunt is still making her interesting, or is she going to
start coming into her own and being her own person?
This is a
fun and easy read, and I enjoyed it for the most part. It’s definitely geared more towards the young
adult (teenage girl) audience, but I still found snippets of this book that
entertained me. This book is broken into
chapters with a separate heading for each letter and it flows nicely with the escapades
Ginny gets into regarding each task from each letter. I enjoyed reading each letter from her aunt,
the task she gives to Ginny, and Ginny’s idea of how to complete each task. Some of the letters and subsequent adventures
moved a bit slow for me, but for the most part this is a fast paced and easy
read. I liked her interaction with
Keith and how she meets him in letter #4, I kind of wish more of the book were
about him, he was an interesting secondary character. Keith wasn’t the only interesting secondary
character in this book. Richard and the
youth hostels she meets also provide for some interesting and memorable
composition. All the locations Ginny travels to are described wonderfully and
you can actually feel like you’re there yourself, especially in London and the
very detailed description of London’s massive department store Harrod’s. Even though all of this made the book fun and
easy to read, there are still faults that I had with this book.
My main problem
has to do with the realm of believability.
Ginny is supposed to be 17 years old while traipsing across Europe on
her own. There is no way I would ever
allow my 17 year old daughter to go off to Europe (alone) without a cellphone
or credit card or some way to keep in touch.
Even with all that, I still don’t think I’d let my daughter go. I’m not trying to be a parenting Nazi, but I
have a feeling a lot of caring and loving parents wouldn’t allow this as
well. I would have had a much better
time believing this story if Ginny had been 18, freshly graduated from high
school and waiting out the summer months before heading to college. There’s not a heck of a lot of difference
between a 17 year-old and an 18 year-old girl.
I know I was basically the same during those two years. Just that one small change would have made
this story much better and more believable in my opinion.
One other
beef I had was that the writing style at times came off across as dull and
uninspired. It’s sort of written in
first person, but sort of also in the third person. It was weird.
It was like the author couldn’t decide what narration she wanted to
write this in, and therefore meshed the two together. An interesting way to narrate a story, to be
sure, but it oftentimes came across as muddled and incoherent. Ginny was a shy teenager without much to say,
so Johnson should have stuck to strictly third-person narrative to tell her
story.
Other than
that, I did enjoy this book and I think that young teenage girls would like
this book too. It’s appropriate for
anyone aged 13 and up, with some mild language and few minor adult situations,
but for the most part it’s a clean book suitable for anyone. Definitely for young adults, but even so I
give this book a B grade because of the originality of the story and some of
the adventures Ginny gets herself into. The
writing could’ve been delivered better, and the whole age thing got my goat a
bit, but overall this is a fun and cute story about a young woman reaching deep
inside and figuring out on her own who she wants to be, all she needed was a
gentle push in the rear to get her going.
There is a sequel to the book, and this one held my interest and
entertained me enough that I just might have to read the sequel to see what
becomes of Ginny Blackstone and just how much more interesting she can be.
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