I didn't hate it, but I didn't really like it either. Strange story with lots of holes, then very abrupt ending. We're never provided with any motivation for Jennifer's behavior, or for the way the book ended. I didn't find either Jennifer or Elizabeth particularly likable and didn't really care what did or didn't happen to them. I was glad to reach the end of the book.

This book has the worst name ever, and I thought that when I read it at age 9.

I think this was one of my top five books from childhood (let's say the period 5-12 years) and I read hundreds if not thousands of books. I used to prop my book up next to my cereal bowl and read through breakfast. I read while I walked home from school. I read in bed, in cars, basically if I wasn't playing with my best friend, I was reading. So it's high praise.

I ADORED this book. It was read to us by my wonderful fourth-grade teacher Trish Cregan and I must have read it myself another five times at least. Why did I love it? Well, first, I was quite into witches. Enid Blytony witches, those many many Scholastic book club witches, Jill Murphy witches, E Nesbit magical thingies, basically anything witchy I'd give a go.

Here's what I remember being great about this book:

1. Elizabeth and her mother. The exasperatedness of her mother. And the whole 'fussy eating' episode, god that's hilarious. Even as a child I totally 'got' the position of the mother on this one.

2. Elizabeth's fascination with Jennifer and the weird power she had over her. She was akin to a total friend-crush for Elizabeth, who was so interested in Jennifer that she would pretty much put up with anything. Done so well.

3. Jennifer's mysteriousness, but also dryness.

4. Pilgrims. I had never heard of pilgrims, not being American, and I was quite interested in the arcane knowledge Jennifer delivers on this stuff, on witch history and myth. Elizabeth is unexotic and modern and she, like me, was drawn in by that.

5. Secrets. This great capturing of the weird ritualising that goes on in childhood friendships. I had a best friend like that, and you kind of develop your own little culture when you spend so much time together. This book captures this. Jennifer herself is a secret in a way. She's almost like Elizabeth's imaginary friend, because no-one knows they are friends, sorry, witches.

6. Hilary Ezra. The conversation about his naming, their territorialisation of him and the tension over his fate. So well-done.

7. The style. This book is full of dry dry dry wit and it's actually fucking hilarious. I can't believe how much of it I still remember.

8. Everything else. You know what? I didn't get this at first because I didn't see the cover but Jennifer is black and it seems to me there aren't so many black kids in their area. So it kind of explains why Jennifer is on her own at the start too.

I can't even explain why this book is perfect but it just really, really is.

We had such fun books as kids!!!!!

A beautifully written story that very delicately tells the tale of two lonely children who find friendship. Reading it as an adult, I couldn't help but feel for the main character. The trick to any great story about a lonely outcast is making that outcast someone the reader would want to befriend. E.L. Konigsburg does a fantastic job at this. In many ways, it's a very sad story that ends hopefully.

One of my favorite authors. This one feels a little off-kilter, but maybe it's just the way that this girl friendship works. Zoe really liked this one, and maybe I'd like it more if I read it again. I like "The Mixed-up Files" and "The View From Saturday" WAY better.

This was my least favourite Konigsburg as a kid and I'm going to be honest... I still don't like it all that much. The pacing is weird-- the entire conflict-and-resolution is in the last couple of pages-- and I find it hard to believe that Jennifer just stops being manipulative and starts being a good friend at the end. I've been both girls in this sort of friendship and it's not an easy pattern to get yourselves out of.

It doesn't have as much depth as Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, but this book is a warm and cosy story about two girls becoming friends, and is a memorable portrait of suburban life in the late 1960s. I really enjoy Elizabeth's voice, and how being an outsider allows her to see those in the centre more clearly. The plot itself is very slight, but the characters are bursting with life.

So dated now, but still classic. Kids dressing up as packs of cigarettes for Halloween! Strange relatives on macrobiotic diets of foods only found in New York City! Enjoying a mint smell from the candy factory so you can pretend to smoke menthols! LOL!

3.5 stars

short review for busy readers: a middle grade/YA novel from 1967 and longlisted for the Newberry Medal in 1968. A bit groundbreaking in that it focuses on the friendship between two girls of different races. Good dialogue and kid realistic narration, but today we'd disapprove of Jennifer's behaviour and "have a talk with her" about bullying and not respecting others' borders.

in detail:
Full disclosure: I disliked, or downright hated, the Newberry Medal winners I read as a kid. In fact, I disliked almost every very-end-of-middle grade-beginning-of-YA novel I read at the age it's meant for. So, I'm sure I'd not have thought much of this one, either.

Many moons later, however, I can see that the writing is just as fresh and the dialogues in just as realistic of a voice now as they were in the late 60s. Not a speck of age on it! In fact, the writing/narration is the best part of the novel.

The mixed race friendship between a black girl, Jennifer, who claims to be a master witch and a white girl, Elizabeth, who would really like to be a master witch was rather in keeping with the issues of the times (and perhaps the reason for its Newberry nomination), but not noticeable in the least today.

What we'd most notice today is Jennifer putting Elizabeth through all sorts of hazing as her witch's "apprentice". She can only eat certain foods on certain days. She's not allowed to use the telephone for a week. She has to bring Jennifer certain gifts.

We'd probably get upset with Jennifer today and call her a bully, but that's fairly normal kid behaviour. Kids dominate other kids and boss them around. If they're convincing enough, or have what the other kids want, the other kids comply.

And Jennifer is pretty convincing and Elizabeth wants to be a witch. So the unequal quality of their friendship mirrors the racial inequality in society. (Even if it's handled too subtly to be noticeable to kid readers)

Unfortunately, the story ends very abruptly and, for me, on disappointing note.

During the course of the entire novel Jennifer works hard to build up her clout as a witch, then suddenly --*poof*-- it was just all pretend! They aren't witches any more, that's baby stuff, they're now normal early teen girls.

What? After all that? Oh c'mon.

I think I probably enjoyed this story, even with the let down ending, more as an adult than I would have as a 12-year old. Because: Newberry.

This book first came out when I was in elementary and I know I read it at least twice. In those days I liked it because it was different to the pioneer stories and the cosy-19th-century-family stories teachers were shoving at us. These days, I'm not so sure.

First, there's Konigsburg's penchant for the too-long title. I know the librarians in our town hated the title of this book and never even tried to type it in full on the cards etc. It was always typed as "Jennifer...and Me, Elizabeth." As kids we referred to it as "Jennifer Blablabla." Then there's her 1960sNew Yorker assumption that the reader automatically knows where the action is set. Not until near the end of the book do we find out it's "around New York." The authoress apparently doesn't know that people in say greater Chicago and Philadelphia and San Francisco also commuted to work, even in 1967. The illustrations are the only indication that Jennifer is black, until about a third of the way through Elizabeth mentions that her mother is "the only black lady at the PTA meeting." Was Konigsburg trying to be inclusive by not mentioning such an obvious point when Elizabeth first meets Jennifer, or was it just lazy writing? Probably the latter, as we never find out what colour Elizabeth's hair and eyes are, either--and kids like to know what main characters look like.

Second, I find the two girls difficult to care about or engage with. Yeah, oh-so-perfect Cynthia is a pain; we've all known the "popular" girls who are so not because they're nice but because they know how to suck up to adults and make themselves very unpleasant to their peers if they don't get what they want. The onion story still makes me laugh. But Jennifer? She talks about how you must never draw attention to yourself when engaging with outsiders, so what is her deal with the paper bag over her head when she participates in the Halloween parade at school? That would mark anyone out. At this reading, it struck me very forcibly that Jennifer spends most of the book manipulating Elizabeth, making her jump through her personal and private hoops--and probably laughing at her behind her back. How does this become okay at the end of the book, so okay that Elizabeth can laugh at it without a word of explanation or apology? The "crisis" of the story goes nowhere, there's no real making up, it's just the common-at-the-time adult myth that kids' quarrels never last. Yes, they do--particularly if you realise that your "friend" is a fake and a liar and has been using you. As for Elizabeth herself, okay, she's a newbie and small for her age, but I don't see that she makes any particular effort to fit in at school or anywhere else. She prefers to "enjoy being weird"--I guess that's as good a way of calling attention to yourself as any. The two girls never seem to interact with their parents, in fact we never see Jennifer with her parents at all. As long as they're "at the library", Elizabeth's mom doesn't seem to care, and her father is rather like the off camera "wahwahwah" adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon; he says two or three whole sentences to mom, and never speaks directly to his daughter.

Somehow at this reading I was reminded of The Egypt Game, partly because of Elizabeth's rather unsuccessful attempt at pinning her hair up (and how does that affect the length of her bangs?) and partly because of her non-attempts to fit into her new town/school. I actually thought Snyder had written this book until I realised who the authoress was.

A quick read for anyone between 8-10 years. Two and a half stars.

I read this in one sitting and it held my attention, but I was never particularly invested in the characters or the outcome of anything they were doing. I liked some of the interesting quirks the author came up with--the different scents in the air depending on if the factory nearby was making mint or butterscotch, the tricks Jennifer comes up with to get extra candy at Halloween, the redundancies and idiosyncrasies of Jennifer's writing style--but the friendship between Jennifer and Elizabeth felt almost antagonistic sometimes, and I didn't like Elizabeth always rolling over and letting Jennifer control her life because she had her convinced these sacrifices were necessary to become a witch. What was Jennifer getting out of making Elizabeth not use the phone or never touch pins or refuse to cut her hair, anyway?

There were also quite a few aspects of the book that would probably be off-putting or alarming to modern readers, such as the girls mixing their blood together, making references to cigarettes, mocking "Health Food," and having parties where you have to wear a frilly "party dress" to attend. Furthermore, the girls' antagonist, Cynthia, doesn't really seem to do very much that's deserving of their hatred; she's fake and prissy, and that's about it. Jennifer and Elizabeth, together, managed to step on her foot, plot to make her trip, undo her clothes before she went on stage, breathe onion in her face, and aspire to use witchcraft to make her sick. It's hard to like them when they seem to be doing a lot more jerky things than Cynthia is.

I liked that the book captured the feeling of finding out what's next in unexplored territory, though; I remember discovering new subjects and wanting to follow graded steps to understanding, and that's well reflected in Elizabeth's desire to loyally obey Jennifer's commands in order to ascend the ranks of witchcraft. I was curious as to why Jennifer was always trying to get Elizabeth to feed her, though. She was constantly looking for free food, and there was never a follow-up to suggest she wasn't getting enough food at home. I also liked that Jennifer was black and it's mentioned once, even though she's apparently the only black student. While it seemed a bit unrealistic that a black child would not experience any mentioned racism in a book set in a white school in the 1960s, it was refreshing for a black kid to just be a kid and not have her race be invoked to make it some kind of "issue book," and Elizabeth herself never voices platitudes about race not mattering or not "seeing" color. The illustrations are accurate, always portraying Jennifer as a black child; they didn't whitewash her.

I thought the ending was random and weird. Jennifer and Elizabeth have a fight, resolve nothing, and then Jennifer shows up without explanation at her home and they're over it and they don't play witchcraft games anymore. There is also the fact that witches are described as being "bad" in the book and some of the things the children do to play at witchcraft are kind of similar to what modern practitioners of witchcraft do (but some are completely the opposite of accurate). I am giving this a middle-of-the-road rating because I didn't actively dislike it and was entertained by it--especially the little-kid-style of the writing that captured a sense of being a fifth grader--but it wasn't anything special for me.