House Party.

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher and librarian in Winnipeg.

Suffering new-kid-in-town syndrome, Casey Bennet befriends Jen, another teen on the fringes of the school in-crowd. When Casey’s parents leave for the weekend, Casey begs to stay home agreeing to spend the weekend with Jen. Jen, meanwhile, persuades her mother to allow her to stay with Casey, insists they throw a house party, and initially invites a limited number of people as demanded by Casey, then contacts more by telephone and MSN in case all those invited do not show. Casey reluctantly agrees, but packs away the breakables and tries to party-proof the house.

People start streaming in for the party bringing alcohol and bad attitudes. Initially the party appears to be going well, but inevitably, to Casey’s horror, chaos ensues as hordes of people show up. Even barring to the door to keep new arrivals out fails to stem the flow; a brick through the front window sends things out of control. By the time police arrive, the distraught girls face serious damage to the house and contents and wonder what went wrong. A remarkably kind and understanding policewoman calls out-of-control house parties “the weekend plague” and explains how word spreads via the internet and word of mouth until things get out of control.

The Orca Soundings series presents high-interest, low-reading-level short novels with contemporary characters and issues designed to appeal to teen readers. The novel employs first-person narrative, straightforward language, uncomplicated sentence structure, a small number of characters, and well-paced action, but the didactic tone might irritate some teens. The calm and sympathetic reactions of the police and Jen’s mother might have teens thinking, “As if.” Recommended.