Plastic Angel - Rilegato

BCCB July/August 05
It’s the summer between eighth and ninth grade, and Randi’s summer mission is to start a rock band with her friend Gellie. Music would be a connection with Randi’s too-often-absent musician father as well as a possible route to popularity, but it’s also unfortunately a distraction from Gellie’s budding career as a model and actress, which Gellie’s mother considers paramount. Randi becomes increasingly invested in the band, Plastic Angel, and its possibilities, despite the fact that Gellie’s mother forbids her daughter’s participation and Randi’s own parents’ marital tension has erupted into separation. Nields is herself a musician, but that doesn’t result in any particularly compelling insider insights into the process; this is a fairly standard tale of young people whose suddenly emerging abilities would take them far if only their personal dramas would permit it. Randi herself has little character beyond her desire for approval and Gellie’s complicity, and the book tends to reduce people and situations to extremes for contrast. That’s not out of keeping with a middle-school viewpoint, though, so readers may cheerfully share Randi’s sweeping judgments; many will also share her yearning for musical self-expression, and they’ll get vicarious enjoyment from the young artist’s progress toward her dream. DS
SLJ 8/05

Nerissa Nields-Duffy has been a member of the band The Nields since 1991. She has toured North America, been on major labels, minor labels and shared stages with the Indigo Girls, James Taylor, Suzanne Vega, 10,000 Maniacs, Dar Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and a panoply of musicians. Between the Nields and her duo with sister Katryna Nields, she has twelve CDs out. Her work has appeared in many compilations, magazines and movies. Her first novel, Plastic Angel, was published by Scholastic Press in 2005. She is currently working on her second novel, The Big Idea. She is an honored graduate of Yale University and holds a BA in English. She is a dynamic and seasoned performer and is passionately in love with what she gets to do for a living. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with her husband, Tom Nields-Duffy.