The best years…

This book reminded us all just how wonderful Junior High really was… not.

(Not jokes were in back then, right?)

Just Girls brought us back to our totally embarrassing years of middle school. This book was actually so relatable that it was nearly impossible for our group to stay on topic. The note passing, the yearbooks and the signing that ensues, the particular groups of girls, lunch hour… All of us had some, seemingly major, ties to all of these staple middle school moments.

In this book, by Margaret J. Finders, she brings us back by following two opposite groups of middle school girls. She is able to give meaning to all of the weird things we did and said before we had even thought about literacy.

When I was in middle school I was not thinking about how the books I read in and out of school were contributing to my own literacy. When I passed notes and signed everyone’s yearbook upside down I wasn’t thinking about what that said about me or my group of friends. Its just what we did. But looking back now, it is so obvious. The way girls choose what to read/ not to read, who they pass notes to, who they let sign their yearbooks- it is all a part of a literacy. The messed up totally crazy literacy of middle school girls.

 

I think that reading this book has given me the firmest grasp on what literacy sponsors are. And how something could be a negative sponsor as well. When a middle schooler is unable to afford afterschool activities that get them pictures in a yearbook, or to afford a yearbook itself, it certainly sets them apart.