Love, Stargirl (2007) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Leo Borlock: Stargirl's boyfriend from book one, Stargirl.
• Dootsie Pringle: The five-year-old best friend of Stargirl. She is like a little version of Stargirl.
• Perry Delloplane: He is a black-haired and blue-eyed boy who "steals" things, loves lemons and reads Ondine.
• Betty Lou Fern: The lovely, agoraphobic woman who is one of the Pringles' neighbors.
• Alvina Klecko: An eleven-year-old girl who works for the donut shop after school and delivers Betty Lou's donuts. She also loves beating up boys and is aggressive.
• Margie: A plump woman who owns a donut shop.
• Arnold Wishart: He is the man who wears a green watch cap and he is always down by the stone piles at the old cement plant. He likes to ask, "are you looking for me?"
• Charlie: The old man at the graveyard
• Perry: A mysterious boy that Stargirl meets and hangs out with. He likes to eat lemons. There are many events that linger between him and Stargirl
• Stephanie: A red-headed girl
• Grace: Charlie's dead wife.
• Laura Pringle: She is Dootsie's mother.
• Rita Wishart: The mother of Arnold.
• Clarissa Delloplane: Neva' baby
• Thomas Klecko: He is Alvina's younger brother. Stargirl calls him Batman.
• Mrs. Klecko: She is the first gardening client or customer of Stargirl. She is Alvina's mom.
• Neva Delloplane: Neva, Margie's new helper in her shop. She is pregnant
• Charles Caraway: He is the father of Stargirl and he worked in MicaTronics. He is currently a milkman.
• Mrs. Caraway: The mother of Stargirl. She homeschools Stargirl, and she also makes costumes for movies.
• Sam: The donut maker.
• The Huffelmeyers: An old couple that orders milk from Mr. Caraway.
• Ike: The owner of a bike and lawn mower repair shop.
• Mrs. Cantello: The Caraways' neighbor.
• Mr. Klecko: He is Alvina Klecko's father.
• Roy Delloplane: Perry's father
• Cinnamon: Stargirls's beloved pet rat

Quotes edit see section history

• “Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry? You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now you’ll never know.”

  Betty Lou

• “I thought: Someday I'm going to sing to that boy with the terrified eyes. I never did sing to you, Leo, not really. You, of all people. It's my biggest regret.... Now, see, I'm sad again.”

  Stargirl

• “Dootsie: Are you Stargirl's mommy? | Mrs. Caraway: I am. | Dootsie: Are you Starmommy?”

• “My happy wagon is almost empty, Leo. Only five pebbles left. Happywise, I'm operating on only 25 percent capacity. Remember when I first showed my wagon to you? How many pebbles were in it then? Seventeen? And then I put another in, remember? I never told you this, but before I went to bed that night, after we kissed for the first time on the sidewalk outside my house, I put in the last two. Twenty. Total happiness. For the first time ever. It stayed that way until I painted that big sign on a sheet and hung it outside the school for all the world to see... Was that my mistake, Leo? Did overdo it? Did I scare you off? It seems like ever since I've been taking pebbles out of the wagon. And now it's down to five and I feel rotten and I don't know how to feel better.”

  Stargirl

• “Dootsie: Do you have a boyfriend? | Stargirl: I'm not sure. I used to. | Dootsie: What's his name? | Stargirl: Leo. | Dootsie: Is Leo a human bean? | Stargirl: We're all human beans. | Dootsie: Do you love him? | Stargirl: I think so. | Dootsie: Does he love you? | Stargirl: He did. And then he didn't. I think he will again. | Dootsie: When? | Stargirl: Someday.”

• “First Kiss Day ♥”

  Stargirl

• “Bullpoopy.”

  Dootsie

• “Every day brings a new memory of something we did a year ago. A parade of unhappy anniversaries.”

  Stargirl

• “Well, I hope you enjoyed your smuggies while they lasted because it's over now. Oh sure, I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'll still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be--OK, I'll say it again--loving you, but I won't abandon myself for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself. I've reclaimed my future. If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you'll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half of me.”

  Stargirl

• “You said you sometimes go out to the enchanted place in the desert and take off your shoes and sit there like we did that first time. Only you don't meditate. You're not at all interested in erasing yourself or me. Oh no. Just the opposite. You close your eyes and you remember. You focus and you concentrate and you remember harder that you've ever remembered in your life, and pretty soon you're sure you can feel me there, sitting cross-legged across from you, smiling at you, Cinnamon in the space between us. You experience me. You relive us. You're so happy. And then so sad when you open your eyes and realize I'm not really there. That's when you miss me the most. Desperately.”

  Stargirl

• “Tell me I didn't imagine it, Leo. Tell me that even though our bodies in separate states, our star selves shared an enchanted place. tell me that right around noon today (eastern time) you had the strangest sensation: a tiny chill on your shoulder...aflutter in the heart...a shadow of strawberry-banana crossing your tongue.... Tell me you whispered my name.”

  Stargirl

• “The boy in my heart ♥”

  Stargirl

• “Lightning flashed white in the kitchen. I had a goofy thought: Did God just take our picture?”

  Stargirl

• “Mr. Caraway: So, Alvina...I know you hate all boys, but I'll bet there's one special boy. One that you hate more than all the others combined--right? | Alvina: Maybe. | Mr. Caraway: Does he go to school with you? | Alvina: Maybe. | Mr. Caraway: Do you think about him sometimes? I mean, how much you hate him? You think about how you'd like to torture him? Like, dumping a whole wheelbarrowful of stinging ants on him? Stuff like that? | Alvina: Maybe. | Mr. Caraway: Yeah. I know what you mean. I hated somebody like that once. | Alvina: Yeah? | Mr. Caraway: Yeah. We were in seventh grade. She was in my homeroom. I hated her more than anybody in the world. | Alvina: Yeah? | Mr. Caraway: Yeah. Know what I did to her? | Alvina: What? | Mr. Caraway: I married her.♥”

• “Betty Lou: So you're feeling jilted. Do you know that word? It's old-fashioned. | Stargirl: I know it. Yes. I feel jilted. | Betty Lou: Because he said he would meet you and he didn't. | Stargirl: Yes. | Betty Lou: And you can't believe it because the other day the sparks were really flying, so to speak. | Stargirl: Yes.”

• “Love trumps appetite.”

  Betty Lou Fern

• “Betty Lou: Well, you know what they say--a rolling stone gathers no permanent girlfriends. | Stargirl: I'm not asking for permanence. | Betty Lou: What are you asking for, Galaxy Girl? | Stargirl: I don't know. Something. Something. Instead of nothing.”

• “Don't ever throw yourself at a man.”

  Betty Lou Fern

• “I still love you. I don't love Perry.”

  Stargirl

• “Sometimes life goes its own way and drags you along.”

  Stargirl

• “Mrs. Caraway: So...Perry... | Stargirl: Mm. | Mrs. Caraway: Boyfriend? | Stargirl: Not really. | Mrs. Caraway: No? | Stargirl: No. I thought he might be. Might become. But no. | Mrs. Caraway: So...what? | Stargirl: Friend. I think. I hope. Once I get over being mad at him. He's a pretty neat guy. | Mrs. Caraway: And Leo? | Stargirl: Leo's still...there. <I nodded toward the window.> Here. <I patted my chest.>”

• “The First Kiss. The Forever Kiss. ♥”

  Stargirl

• “The sunrise of my own personal Solstice. ♥”

  Stargirl

• “We Arnolds, our hearts yearn backward. We long to be found, hoping our searchers have not given up and gone home. But I no longer hope to be found, Leo. Do not follow me! Let's just be fabulously where are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies! Love and Love and Love Again,”

  Stargirl

• “I plunged into the moment. I let myself drown in it. The setting, the sunrise -- talk about a moment! Who could resist? And that moment just went on and on for the rest of that day and into the next. But then I began to notice a funny thing. The moment began to fray at one end an disengage itself from one of its major parts - namely, him, Perry - until there was a clear space between them: the moment here, Perry there. They were not one and the same. And I began to feel again something that I had been only dimly aware of before. It was a small, surprising sense of disappointment even as he was kissing me, but the violins were so loud that at the time I could hear nothing else. Now that disappointment was returning, and with it the realization that the magic had come only from the moment, not from him.”

  Stargirl, page 224

• “I want you to say the words because they are flying out of your mouth, because you can't possibly stop them, not because I led you to the brink of them. And I want to know that they're being said to me. To me. Not to some girl in the movies or a book. Not to some idea of Girl that you've picked up along the way from other boys and other girls. To me. Stargirl. Do you know me, Leo? Really know me?”

  Stargirl, page 225

• “We were once so fresh, a dazzling snowfield. Let's promise to each other that if we ever meet again we will never plow and push our new-fallen snow. We will not become slush. We will stay like this field and melt away together only in the sun's good time.”

  Stargirl, page 29

• “But my heart doesn't care about sense. My heart never says: Why? Only: Who?”

  Stargirl

• “As he jabbered on, I began to understand that he was doing more than talking, more than simply remembering. He was reliving, in a way that can only be done by sharing with someone else.”

  Stargirl

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• “You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today that you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you’ll never know.”

  Highlighted by 72 Kindle customers

• Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out

  Highlighted by 63 Kindle customers

• If you start by hating one or two people, you won’t be able to stop. Pretty soon you’ll hate a hundred people.”

  Highlighted by 48 Kindle customers

• It’s as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning their instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the musical mess of it.

  Highlighted by 43 Kindle customers

• Was that beginning to be us, Leo? I’d rather never see you again than have that happen. We were once so fresh, a dazzling snowfield. Let’s promise to each other that if we ever meet again we will never plow and push our new-fallen snow. We will not become slush. We will stay like this field and melt away together only in the sun’s good time.

  Highlighted by 40 Kindle customers

• You keep feeding it more and more people, and the more it gets, the more it wants. It’s never satisfied.

  Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers

• Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.

  Highlighted by 38 Kindle customers

• And I sadly think of what Archie says, that the sounds of extinct birds may be preserved in the songs of mockingbirds.

  Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers

• the VernalEquinox (March 21), the Summer Solstice (June 21), the Autumnal Equinox (September 22), and the Winter Solstice (December 21).

  Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers

• In his own way, he was echoing the legend of the Lenape girl. He had already leaped—it was just taking him longer to fall.

  Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Rapps Dam Road: This is where the Caraways' house is located.
• Bemus: A park near Stargirl's house.
• Ringgold Street: This is where the Pringles' house is located.
• Margie's Little Donut Shop: It is located at Bridge Street between Pizza Dee-Lite and Four Winds Travel.
• Enchanted Hill: A peaceful place where Stargirl usually meditates.
• Ridgeview: It is a diner.
• The Huffelmeyers' House: It is located at 214 White Horse Road.
• Blue Comet Diner: It is a diner.
• The Kleckos' House: It is a beautiful, gray stone house with a wraparound porch and yellow awnings, on a street shaded by sycamores.
• Colonial Theatre: An old moviehouse where a part of the film, Blob, had taken place and where the film is annually shown.
• Pizza Dee-Lite: A pizza place.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Hope: Describe this theme.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Stargirl.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jerry Spinelli (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ7.S75663 2007
• Dewey: FIC SPINELLI

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Children's Books › People & Places › Social Situations › Friendship › Fiction
• Books › Children's Books › People & Places › Social Situations › Emotions & Feelings › Fiction
• Books › Children's Books › Authors & Illustrators, A-Z › ( S ) › Spinelli, Jerry
• Books › Children's Books › Issues
• Books › Children's Books › Literature
• Books › Teens › Social Issues

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