After being moved across the country and away from her best friends, 12-year-old Raisin Rodriguez starts a blog to keep in touch. Here she records her deep thoughts and biggest personal crises. When students at her new school discover her personal thoughts, will she ever be able to make friends?

Fun read, unique style. It reads like a diary with comments from friends thrown in. I found myself getting annoyed with Raisin for all of the drama until I realized....thats how this age group is! Older readers may find this book annoying, but 9-14 year olds will find it pitch perfect with real life. ( )

Raisin Rodriguez's mom gets married and moves across the country with her new husband, taking Raisin and her little sister from Berkley, CA to Philadelphia, PA. Not surprisingly, the move is difficult. Raisin misses her two best friends, doesn't fit in with the popular girls no matter how hard she tries, and feels as if she is completely out of place in this new blended family. So Raisin starts a secret blog to keep her best friends informed about her life. And she is not necessarily nice. As a matter of fact, Raisin is overly concerned with being popular, judging people based on their looks, and just generally snarky. In short, she's a pretty average, garden-variety middle school girl. Add in the difficulty of having moved and adjusting to an entirely different culture (seriously--Berkley to Philadelphia--how much more different could the culture be?) and Raisin's fits of self-pity, her meanness towards the only person who shows her any kindness, her pettiness and general snottiness towards being a contributing member of this step-family make perfect sense. The denouement is completely predictable and of course Raisin grows as a person once she sees her writings for what they are. But the book doesn't set out to push any boundaries, just as the middle school lit we read eons ago didn't push any boundaries. It just gave us a mirror to look into, as Raisin does for the current technologically savvy set of middle schoolers today. And what Raisin learned, they will hopefully learn by osmosis rather than experience. Because it's far easier to learn from Raisin's mistakes than to make them yourself. Written as blog posts, this was cute, funny, self-aware, and altogether entertaining, as long as you aren't living with an ungrateful and mopey Raisin yourself. It should appeal to middle school girls and to some of their moms. ( )

very cute. i liked it a lot. after teen book club, we discovered that this book was largely a hit for my sixth and seventh grade girls, but after that -- well, let's just say that book club was divided. but largely, this book is perfect for the demographic it is aimed at. ( )

it is about a girl who moved away from her friends and her dad and has to make new friends and the only way she can speak to her friends would be through her blog and that is how she tells them everything about a lot of people their and when she doesn't log out and someone see's it and prints it she must figure out who her true friends really are even if they've been with her all along ( )

The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez by Judy Goldschmidt (New York: Razorbill, 2005) tells its story entirely through blog entries. The book opens with blog author Raisin providing expository details—she's moved to Philadelphia, far away from her best friends; and her new stepsister keeps the phone tied up so she can't call them. Her solution is to post blog entries that her friends in Berkeley can read and comment on. The secrecy of her blog is always foregrounded. Her first entry ends with a warning to her two best friends, her readers: “Please do not feel free, under any circumstances, on pain of death, to give the address of this blog to anyone. This blog is very personal and confidential and deals with mature subject matter.” As readers will likely anticipate, the secret blog becomes public and Raisin must deal with the social repercussions. The protagonist records in more detail than most teens are likely to in real blogs, but the story is believable and readers will be eager for the two forthcoming sequels Raisin Rodriguez & the Big-Time Smooch (New York: Razorbill, 2007) and Will the Real Raisin Rodriguez Please Stand Up? (New York: Razorbill, 2007). ( )