Me and the Blondes

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Like Lucy Vakovik in Toten’s The Only House, Sophia (“Sophie”)
Kandinsky is embarrassed by her immigrant mother’s broken English.
However, Sophie has a greater source of shame. Her father, also an
immigrant, is incarcerated in Kingston Penitentiary where he’s serving
20 years to life for aggravated manslaughter.

Over the past six years, classmates have cruelly teased Sophie about
her convict father, and she has already attended and abandoned five
schools. Now, in 1974, as Sophie enters Grade 9 in yet another school,
her mother has a plan. They will lie and “kill” dad; however,
Sophie’s personal strategy for acceptance involves infil-trating her
grade’s social power elite—the blondes. By winning a spot for
herself and the trio of blondes on the school’s basketball team,
Sophie does manage to achieve the desired social status.

A delightfully funny book populated by numerous zany adult characters,
Me and the Blondes also contains some very serious elements. From the
prologue readers learn that, unknown to her mother, Sophie has taken 11
bus trips over the last two years from Toronto to Kingston, but she has
always returned home without visiting her father. Sophie, once her
father’s princess, writes letters to him which she destroys rather
than mail. When her father makes his fortnightly phone call, Sophie
refuses to speak to him. In addition to coming to terms with her
relationship with her father, Sophie learns that blondes do not
necessarily have perfect lives, for one of the trio is bulimic while
another hides that she is adopted. Highly recommended.