Reading a book by Elizabeth Berg is like sitting down for a long
chat with your best friend. She writes about women and their
problems with sensitivity and humor that never lapses into
sentimentality. Each of her books takes the reader into the life,
thoughts and feelings of a woman who is dealing with a serious
dilemma. Berg is never afraid to let her protagonist make mistakes,
and this honesty allows the reader both to understand and identify
with her characters. By the time you have finished one of her
books, you feel as though you've made a new friend.

Her new book, JOY SCHOOL, is a glimpse into the life of Katie, a
twelve-year-old girl whose life has undergone tremendous upheaval.
Her mother has died, and she and her father have moved from Texas
to a small town in Missouri. Katie is not close to her father, she
misses her mother and her friends, and she is very lonely.

Katie's description of the lunch period at her new school expresses
her feelings perfectly. "It is hard enough to do lunch when you
know a place. But when you are new, you have never seen anything so
big as the lunchroom. There are secret maps, and you'd better not
mess up. Which I did, of course."

Along the way Katie begins to make new friends, but they are not
like her friends in Texas, and she has trouble reconciling these
new relationships with the people she knew before. When Cynthia, a
girl in her history class who becomes Katie's first new friend,
invites Katie to visit, Katie thinks, "She can't help it that she's
so strange. She doesn't know how to do friends. And anyway, she's
all I have."

One day Katie goes ice skating, accidentally falls through the ice,
and meets Jimmy, a man much older than she is --- and married. She
falls in in love with him, unaware, for a time, that his interest
in her is merely that of a friend. When she meets his wife and
finally understands this, she is terribly hurt, but she comes to
understand that love comes in many forms through many different
people.

JOY SCHOOL illustrates how the things that hurt the most can,
sometimes, teach the most. It is a beautifully written book that
every reader can identify with at one point or another. It is a
book about resilience, hope and love.

For those of you who are big fans of Elizabeth Berg, JOY SCHOOL
takes up the story of Katie where DURABLE GOODS leaves off. JOY
SCHOOL stands alone --- you don't need to read DURABLE GOODS to
understand the story.  But I think you will want to read
it and learn more about this amazing young woman.

   ---Reviewed by Judith Handschuh