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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2006, 278 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2007, 278 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket: "When you don't
talk, there’s a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said."
Harsh words indeed, from Brian Nelson of all people. But, D. J.
can't help admitting, maybe he’s right. Stuff like why her best
friend, Amber, isn’t so friendly anymore. Or why her little
brother, Curtis, never opens his mouth. Why her mom has two jobs
and a big secret. Why her college-football-star brothers won't
even call home. Why her dad would go ballistic if she tried out
for the high school football team herself. And why Brian is so,
so out of her league. Welcome to the summer that
fifteen-year-old D. J. Schwenk of Red Bend, Wisconsin, learns to
talk, and ends up having an awful lot of stuff to say.
Comment: If we had a category for great books that almost
got away, Dairy Queen would be on it. Published in
hardcover in May 2006, it sat on the shelf above my desk for a
couple of months, bringing a smile to my face every time I
looked at the cow on the cover (sadly, there is no quizzical cow
on the paperback jacket, instead the publisher has chosen an
image of two teens, which is likely to be of more appeal to the
intended target audience, but not to their mothers!) Eventually, I started to read
Dairy Queen to our two children at our "morning reading
parties" (the magical half-hour we take out at the start of each
school day when they climb into our
bed to be read to).
We got a couple of chapters in before they decided that the storyline was a little too "teenage" for
them (they were 11 and 13 at the time), so Dairy Queen got set aside again; the only
difference being that this time the cow was staring at me in
the morning when I woke! Finally, I found a couple of quiet
hours to finish the story myself, and what a delight it is.
D.J. is a heroine to root for - funny, intelligent, independent
and self-deprecating. I thoroughly recommend Dairy Queen
(the first of a planned trilogy) to teenage girls - and if the
occasional boy could bring himself to read it, he might not only
enjoy it but would glean more about the female psyche than he'll
learn from any number of locker room discussions!
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in October 2006, and has been updated for the
June 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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