

If you go around smelling like that, nobody will ever marry you. Clean yourself up, and don’t go around smelling like that. Take a bath, that’s what you should do instead of picking on little kids and telling lies. Veronica heads home after getting yelled at by Peter’s neighbor: Veronica makes it her mission in life to beat him up, which is where the book opens by the end of the first chapter Peter has outwitted her and she ends up with a bucket of fish guts dumped over her head. Which is why she is infuriated at the arrival of New Kid Peter Wedemeyer, who despite being the shrimpiest kid in her grade, quickly learns of her reputation and decides to make a preemptive strike by constantly making up rhymes to tease her: “Veronica Ganz doesn’t wear pants” is a typical example. 63, and by the eighth grade she has beaten up every kid in school on general principle. The Plot: …Which is to say, this looks like it is going to be about a tomboy that finally grows up into a young lady, but then quickly turns into a rather grim story about child abuse, spousal abuse, abject poverty, parental abandonment and bullying… and then ends up being exactly the sort of story that Barbara Fisher would hate.ġ3 year old Veronica Ganz is the biggest girl in her class at P.S.

So, this is one of those books where you think you know exactly what you’re going to get, then it turns out to be something completely different, and then it still ends up being what you thought it was in the first place. “Peter Wedemeyer, Peter Wedemeyer, I’ll get you, Peter Wedemeyer!”
