Jane Purdy is fifteen years old and feeling quite fed up with her life. She and her best friend Julie spend their time on their babysitting business, going to school and dreaming about being part of the popular crowd. Jane feels like everyone else is having a wonderful time, while she gets passed by. One day at the end of summer before the start of sophomore year, Jane's luck changes. She meets Stan and for the first time, has a real boyfriend. But Jane is awkward and unsure of the right things to say. Who know fifteen could be so complicated?

This book was first published in the mid 1950's, and it is certainly dated. Women wearing stockings and gloves, going on a date and having never eaten Chinese food, dates at the soda fountain...modern teenage readers may not know what to make of it. But the emotions behind the plot haven't changed. Being fifteen, feeling young, inexperienced and unsophisticated compared to others at school, those things are still the same. The author does a wonderful job of capturing all the fear and awkwardness of a young teenager falling in love for the first time. ( )

If you know Cleary's books you know they can be inhaled in one sitting. Written for children and young adults, Fifteen tackles, well, being fifteen. Jane Purdy is exactly that age and anxious to break free of stereotypical teenager dilemmas like mean girls and being boy crazy. She tires of babysitting brats, longs for a boyfriend she can call her own, and is sick of being the homely girl Marcy always teases. As it is, Jane is an easy target with her sensible shoes, no nonsense hairstyle and round collars. I found it distressing that Jane needed a boy to feel like she belonged at Woodmont High, but that's fifteen for you. This is definitely one book best read as a young child or early teen. ( )

This book is almost 60 years old. The mind boggles.

One might think that a 60 year old Young Adult book would be dated. One would be absolutely correct. This is a fascinating glimpse of the 1950's. Want to know just how narrow a woman's place was in the world in the 1950's? Read this. It's an eye-opener.

Jane Purdy is a typical fifteen-year old girl who just wants to meet a boy, and she does. Nothing atypical about that, even in modern YA fiction. What's eye-opening here is Jane's attitude about herself and her place - her complete lack of self-confidence and worth. Nowadays a character like this exists in stories as a cautionary tale with a moral that a girl needs to be confident and like herself for who she is and that she doesn't need a boyfriend to achieve either of those things. Fifteen's moral is that Jane needed to be confident and like herself just so she could win the guy.

I bought this book recently because I remembered reading it as a young teen and I thought, what the hell, let's see how it holds up. I knew it was written for a different time so I was able to enjoy the story, mostly. Jane's easy willingness to immediately blame and berate herself for the first half of the story was tough to take but mostly because I knew this wasn't considered aberrant behaviour for the times. Overall, though, it's well-written and it was a nice snapshot of just how far women have come. ( )

This was a cute story :) ( )

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