Book Review: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

"And... I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am me and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain." She smiled dreamily. "I like that most of all, being rain."

Title: Stargirl
Author: Jerry Spinelli
Published by: Scholastic on September 2002
Series: Stargirl #1
Genre: Young Adult, Children, Contemporary, Romance
Setting: Arizona
Format: Ebook, 149 pages
My Copy Source: Internet

Stargirl is not your typical type of girl. She's not the bitch-y type and she's not the school girl type either. She's neither anything that you can think of when you think of girl types. She's beyond words, beyond any stereotypical girls you may know from anywhere.

She's home-schooled for fifteen years and doesn't have an idea of what people normally does. That explains why she's different, but doesn't hinder her either to show who she really is.

Then she met Leo Borlock. He was fascinated by this weird girl and he learned her ways. But at some point, not everybody can accept her and Leo was faced with a decision: stand by her or stand by them. 

I haven't been a reader long enough to leaf through every pages of books ever written but I can tell you I love the ones that make me cry. Especially when I still cry even when I'm just retelling the story to other people.

My sister is not an avid reader and I never stop convincing her to try and do so, that's why I'm very fond of retelling my recent book adventures with her. But I tell you, I only tell those stories that I like so it means that if my sister knew that book, I must have loved it well enough that I have told her the story after I finished it.

As I have been blabbing just seconds ago, I told my sister about Stargirl and how she is like this and like that while recounting her weirdness and adventures and I was crying while telling her pieces of what I could still remember. I may not have cried buckets like I did in Allegiant (Veronica Roth's 3rd installment of Divergent Trilogy) but the tears I've cried for Stargirl is pure heartache and just... heartache.

Stargirl is different, she's magical and at first I don't want to believe that she's real, just like the students from her school, who made up stories as to who she really is. They can't grasp the idea of someone being different from them so they thought she's an alien or whatsoever. And as much as I wanted to scream at them, I knew how they felt. I knew that if we all live in the same situation as them, we would all be weirded out by the girl who has a pet rat, sings and dance with a ukulele around the cafeteria and cheers every basketball team who scores the point even if it is the opponent. It's just hard for us to accept something different because we are all scared to be on a different side of everything that is the same.

I love how this book was written. It makes my imagination twirl around every word and every movement of Stargirl makes me want to crawl into the book and join her in her adventures, and dance numbers and just everything that she does. This book is written simply, the words are just there to tickle our imagination but it is truly compelling and magical that at some point you may wonder what comes next, Stargirl? What other unusual thing are you gonna show us? Yet we are still surprised by her compassion for everything that we're afraid to do because no one will accept it. We are still in awe that she can surprise us with things that she does for other people.

It's everything that she is that is the child in all of us. And at some point, we all want to change a person just so they can fit our expectation of a friend or a lover, but somehow changing a person erases who he/she really is. All of us are the people behind Leo and somehow, while reading this book, we all secretly want to be Stargirl. The girl who showed the world that she can be who she wants, she can try to be who everybody wants but in the end would still love to be the girl that she really was and really is. We all want to and you'll know what I mean after reading this book.


This book is about individuality that we are yet to discover within ourselves. I think the book invites us to be better and hope that somewhere out there, kindness still exists in all of our hearts. It teaches us that happiness doesn't just come from the things that come through our doors, but rather, it comes from the ones that we offer on the hands of other people. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you should. I'm off to read the next one called Love, Stargirl and I hope it's as promising as this one.

"We always say we love to be unique but we can never really accept something that is different from what we normally are."