Cathy Hopkins

Somehow, I ended up with just one Cathy Hopkins' Truth or Dare books. While I have all of the Mates, Dates book, these are a little more high school oriented, since one of them has a hugely inappropriate but hilarious scene involving toothpaste and strawberry yogurt-- I'm not saying any more!

This one is fine. Cat's widowed father is getting remarried and the family is moving. Cat is okay with this, since it means that she will get help with her younger siblings. She likes her step mother, but things aren't going smoothly with the move, and she finds a trunk belonging to her mother that sets her on a path of rediscovery. Lots of nice family interaction, supportive friends-- this is a highly addictive writer, and for middle school, I'd definitely get all of the Mates, Dates books.

My Cathy Hopkins story. When I visited London, I went to the Heath Library because it was the most likely library that the characters in Mates, Dates would have gone to. (And it's in the garden of the house where John Keats wrote his 'Ode to a Nightingale'.) There weren't any of Hopkins' books there. I later wrote to her and mentioned this fact; she wrote back to say that she donated a set of her books to the library. What a nice lady!

There is a new book out-- Mates, Dates: The Secret Story.