Call Me Oklahoma!
Miriam Glassman
Holiday House, 2013
123 pages, $16.95
ISBN 978-0-8234-2742-0
Call Me Oklahoma is an amazing fictional book written in a “young” and easy to understand language; clearly by an author who is familiar with the life of girls. I recommend this book for girls second through sixth grades.
Have you ever wanted to change your name? Well, Paige Turner did. She wanted to be just like her cousin Cordelia who turned out to be not as perfect as she appeared to be that summer the two girls spent together (in fact, she was horrible). Thinking that changing her name would make a difference and help her become as perfect as her cousin, Paige decided to call herself Oklahoma, and what a better time for that switch than the beginning of the fourth grade. It wasn’t an easy thing to do with her brother, Conrad, and the kids in her class laughing at the new name.
Paige betrayed her best friend, Gavi, when she used her book fair money to buy a stuffed monkey instead of the Morse Code book the girls were going to share. Buying the stuffed monkey, Milkshake, proved to be the right move and brought Paige the popularity she was looking for as Oklahoma. Even Viveca, the meanest girl in fourth grade, wanted to become Oklahoma’s friend. At the peak of her popularity, Paige realized she had to do whatever it takes to get her friend back.
Will she get her friend back? Will her friend forgive her? Most importantly will she stay Oklahoma or go back to being good old Paige? Well, I guess you just have to read the book to find out.
Miriam Glassman, the book’s author, is a cousin of Annabel Sacks’, wife of Jewish News book review editor, Hal Sacks.
—The review is by Tia Einhorn, age 11, a Hebrew Academy of Tidewater student and the daughter of Shuli and Craig Einhorn. Tia arrived in Tidewater from Israel six years ago unable to speak or write a word of English.