I’d heard of this book; it’s won some awards since its publication in 2000. There’s supposedly a movie version in the works, and Mr. Spinelli published a sequel in 2007, Love, Stargirl. Brown Bear Daughter read Stargirl last year and loved it.

I read it and loved it. Mr. Spinelli may or may not have intended it, may or may not be a Christian, but I think Stargirl is a Christ-figure. She is a bit, (OK, a lot), fantastical, unbelievably ego-free and selfless. (She does lose her focus for a little while in the middle of the book, but only temporarily for the sake of Leo, her boyfriend and the narrator of the story.) Mostly, Stargirl is Jesus, too good to be true, not a saint, but something better, more human and yet more Other. She’s Ann Kiemel, Corrie Ten Boom, and Mother Teresa, without the doubts and without the Holy Spirit to empower her. Everybody loves her, and then they “crucify” her because she won’t fit the mold. Even her best friend deserts her, denies her, and fails to understand and support her mission.

In an interview in the back of my book, Mr. Spinelli says, “What does it say about us if we believe such a person to be impossible? The message of the story is precisely the opposite: such a person is possible, and to the extent that Stargirl is us . . . so are we.”

But Mr. Spinelli is whistling in the dark, and I contend that he knows that he is doing so. Although he says his wife resembles Stargirl, you and I and Mr. Spinelli all know that none of us lives up to Stargirl’s ability to completely live an authentic life and at the same time be so unaware of self as to focus wholly on the needs of others. And if anyone did, They (which is Us) would not follow her in dancing the Bunny Hop. They’d/We’d shun her and slap her and banish her.

Which is finally what happens to Stargirl. But it’s a lovely story and something to aspire to, by God’s grace.

It reminds of one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Go here to read a lovely story at Peter Sieruta’s Collecting Children’s Books about when Jerry Spinelli was a nobody, and how a couple of guys in New York City made him feel like Somebody.