Gale - A Study Guide for Jerry Spinellis Stargirl

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Printed in Mexico
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Jerry Spinelli

2000

Written for adolescent readers, Stargirl (2000) is an allegorical tale of the conflict between conformity and individuality. An unconventional new student who calls herself Stargirl captures the heart of the shy Leo Borlock and the imagination of her classmates at Mica Area High School. All too soon, however, Stargirl's enthusiasm crosses unseen lines, bringing on the scorn of her peers. Although she remains blissfully unaware of the collective cold shoulder they give her, Leo finds himself caught in the middle, unsure of where his loyalties lie.

Named a 2001 Book of the Year by Book Sense, a New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year, and an American Library Association (ALA) Best Book, Stargirl is one of Jerry Spinelli's best-loved novels.

Jerry Spinelli was born February 1, 1941, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. His first career aspiration was to be a cowboy. He states on his website:

One day in second grade I dressed up in my cowboy outfit, complete with golden cap pistols and spurs on my boots. I went to school that way. It was not Halloween. When the teacher asked if I would like to do something for the class, I got up and sang I Have Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle.

He later set his sights on baseball, which he features in a number of his books. During a high-school football game, he wrote a poem that was subsequently published in his hometown newspaper. Spinelli identifies the day of its publication as the day he decided to become a writer.

He wrote his first short stories and edited the literary magazine at Gettysburg College, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After attending writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he took a job as a men's wear editor for a department store, writing during his free time. He published his first novel, Space Station Seventh Grade, fifteen years later. The novel, like the four unpublished manuscripts he had written previously, was initially aimed at an adult audience but features an adolescent. When a children's publisher signed on for the book, Spinelli found his calling. He has since published thirty books for children and young adults. Spinelli is most famous for his fifth book, Maniac Magee (1990), which won the prestigious Newbery Award in 1991. His 1997 novel Wringer was a Newbery Honor Book. He published Stargirl in 2000 and a sequel, Love, Stargirl, in 2007.

Spinelli is married and has six children and twenty-one grandchildren. He has noted that, in addition to his own childhood, his children have provided great source material for his fiction. Like Stargirl, he has also owned pet rats. They're smart and friendly and make terrific pets, he declares on his website.

In this prologue, the book's narrator, eleventh grader Leo Borlock, relates that when he was a child, his uncle wore a necktie that had a porcupine on it. Leo adored the tie, and when his family moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona, his uncle gave it to him. Leo decided to collect porcupine ties but up until his fourteenth birthday had only one. One day Leo returned home one day to find a necktie with porcupines on it on his front porch with an unsigned note wishing him a happy birthday. No one seemed to know anything about it.

On the first day of school in eleventh grade, all the students are buzzing about a new girl, said to have been previously homeschooled, who says her name is Stargirl Caraway. She is dressed in a long, white, ruffled dress and carries a ukulele on her back. She plays it and sings during lunch. Leo and his best friend, Kevin, see her as a potentially exciting subject for their in-school TV talk show, Hot Seat.

Media Adaptations

• Listening Library released an unabridged audiobook of Stargirl in 2007. It is read by John H. Ritter and the running time is 4 hours and 25 minutes.

The next day, a student named Hillari Kimble declares that Stargirl must be a fake, that the school has planted her there to improve school spirit. The rumor circulates, and Leo debates it. During lunch, Stargirl walks among the students and stares at them. Leo worries irrationally that she might be looking for him. She stops in front of a student named Alan Ferko and sings happy birthday to him.

Kevin and Leo surmise that Stargirl will not last long at Mica Area High School, where all of the students dress, act, and talk the same way and have the same taste. Stargirl continues wearing outrageous clothes to school and singing happy birthday to students in the lunchroom. She decorates her desk with flowers and carries a bag with a gaudy sunflower on it. She has a pet rat that she brings to school. Leo thinks that Hillari must be rightthat Stargirl cannot be realbut he lies awake at night thinking about her, while the moonlight streams in his window. One night he realizes that she is real.