Jennifer Jones Won’t Leave Me Alone

Reviewed: January 31, 2007
By: poem by Frieda Wishinsky / illustrations by Neal Layton
Publisher: Scholastic Books
32 pages, $6.99

With Valentine’s Day not all that far away I suppose it would be appropriate to consider a love story of sorts.

This one is the rhythmic complaint of an anonymous little boy who thinks he has just one big problem in his life when the story begins.

Jennifer Jones won’t leave me alone.

She sits by my side. She shouts in my ear.

She tells me she loves me.

She calls me her Ôdear’.

What a predicament for a little boy in primary school. Oh the teasing he takes from all his peers. Actually, they both have to take it, but he’s the only one bothered by it.

He wishes her gone, and is overjoyed when his wish is granted. but he soon finds himself missing everything about her that once bothered him so much. Her postcards from her travels all over Europe only make him feel more lonely.

So when he discovers that she is going to back he decides she is worth the teasing and doesn’t try to hide the fact that he is overjoyed.

Nice story. Clever rhyme. Amusing, childlike illustrations in “pen, ink, pencil, paint and an Apple Macintosh computer.”

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