The Horn Book Guide

OLDER FICTION

Wittlinger, Ellen

What's in a Name?

147 pp. | Simon | March, 2000 | Trade ISBN 0-689-82551-X $$16.00

(1) YA Each of the ten chapters in this thoughtfully structured novel is narrated by a different high-school student in Scrub Harbor--a town divided over a possible name change. The town's identity crisis is a nifty backdrop for the novel's main focus: each narrator's own crisis of identity. Wittlinger's characters struggle with who they are, discovering (or guessing) how others see them while figuring out how they see themselves in this intriguing, complex, and believable novel.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2000