Gr 7 Up-When she is blackmailed into backpacking across Southeast Asia with a grandmother she barely knows, 16-year-old Vassar Spore is reluctant to disrupt a summer devoted to furthering her life plan-to become class valedictorian and win a Pulitzer Prize. The overachieving teen, named for the college she hopes to attend, overhears her parents arguing with Grandma Gerd about a "Big Secret" and is shocked that they've agreed to send her off to the jungles of Malaysia. Vassar arrives at the Golden Lotus guesthouse with a mountain of luggage and a plan to write a novel about the trip for her AAP (Advanced Advanced) English class. As the setting shifts, so does the story's tone, from Vassar's stilted home life and stuffy parents to a vividly described environment and array of colorful characters focusing on her bohemian artist grandmother and a comical Malaysian bodyguard, Hanks, whose Elvis haircut and cowboy drawl both irritate and captivate his charge. Vassar begins chronicling the travel adventures of Sarah, her fictional alter ego, as the trio trek through cities and the lush and humid jungles of Cambodia and Laos while Grandma Gerd offers cryptic hints about the mysterious family secret. Committing a lion's share of cultural faux pas, Vassar accidentally angers one tribal family and is imprisoned by opium-smoking animists. In a climactic episode, she escapes the bamboo dungeon and blindly heads down a dangerously steep jungle mountain. Suspenseful and wonderfully detailed, the well-crafted story maintains its page-turning pace while adding small doses of cultural insight and humor.-Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Like her parents, 16-year-old Vassar is a Planner with a capital "P!" She leaves nothing to chance (guess where she plans to go to college?). Never, that is, until the doorbell rings one night, and before you can say "unexpected," Vassar finds herself backpacking through the jungles of Southeast Asia with Gertrude, her madcap artist grandmother. How could her parents have permitted this? Well, it has something to do with what Vassar thinks of as "The Big Secret." Will she solve the mystery before she's completely undone by fallout from Grandma's relentless acts of spontaneity? What do you think? Although too long and too filled with accounts of Vassar's endless toilet troubles, this first novel has its amusements and diversions, including Vassar's share of romance with a self-styled Malaysian "cowboy." The best part, however, is the vividly realized setting. Cornwell has obviously been there and done that, and her novel is much the richer d funnier r it.

A naive teen learns how to carpe diem after spending an adventurous summer in Southeast Asia. Sixteen-year-old Vassar Spore attends a private school where she's prepping to be valedictorian, attend Vassar College, marry a surgeon or judge, write a book and win a Pulitzer by age 37. Her life has been carefully scripted by her efficiency-expert father and life-coach mother. But Vassar's hygienically sealed world capsizes when her parents reluctantly let her spend the summer backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos with her bohemian Grandma Gerd. Suspecting that Grandma has blackmailed her parents, Vassar is determined to discover their "Big Secret." A novice traveler, Vassar arrives in Melaka with ten pieces of matched luggage, her laptop on which she plans to convert her experiences into a novel for Advanced Placement credit, her Genteel Traveler's Guides and her Portable Travel Planner. Appalled by Grandma Gert's "live in the moment" philosophy, Vassar gradually jettisons her obsessive-compulsive behavior and emerges knowing who she really is and what she really wants as she travels from the temples of Angkor to the bamboo huts of Laos. A witty coming-of-age adventure. (Fiction. 12-17)

Take a traveler as reluctant as Anne Tyler's accidental tourist and add the number of misadventures found in <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The Out-of-Towners, and you have the recipe for Cornwell's hilarious, adventure-packed first novel. Valedictorian hopeful Vassar Spore has her summer all planned out when her bohemian grandmother somehow blackmails her Type A parents into letting her take Vassar backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos. So instead of enrolling in AP courses in summer school, Vassar finds herself hiking through jungles with Grandma Gerd and an Asian cowboy chaperone, and battling food poisoning, venom-carrying critters and primitive tribes (one of which holds Vassar hostage). The more humiliations and unwanted surprises Vassar endures, the more likable she becomes, shedding pride and primness along with her obsessive reliance on routine. Her rapid succession of crises, while jaw-dropping, appears more plausible than the family secret that is revealed bit by bit during the course of their travels. Although readers will probably figure out the mystery long before the protagonist does, the exotic settings and the wacky predicaments will exercise a strong enough grip to hold readers' imaginations. Ages 12-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Sept.)

Imagine one's life planned down to the minute by an efficiency-expert father and a life-coach mother. Then imagine a Bohemian artist grandmother blackmailing those rigid parents, coercing them into making one take a summer vacation with her traipsing around Southeast Asia. Meet sheltered, sixteen-year-old Vassar Spore. What is this secret causing her parents to cave in to Grandma Gerd's request, possibly ruining Vassar's chance at class valedictorian and acceptance at Vassar College? Vassar and her friends devise a plan for her to keep her class ranking: Write a novel about her adventures. Her autobiographical novel includes her encounter with an ear-nibbling Vietnamese old man, her trek through the Laotian jungle sans her ten pieces of luggage and hygiene paraphernalia, sleeping in and escaping from an opium den, various other escapades and blunders, and her first romance with Hank, a Malaysian cowboy sporting paste-on sideburns and a pompadour. Of course, the secret is revealed as well. This novel is cute. It contains easy and descriptive writing, e-mails from Vassar's friends and parents, excerpts from her book, and cutesy quotes from the various guidebooks that she totes around. The pacing is quick. Vassar's evolution from life planner to live-in-the-moment teen is predictable as is the love interest. The locale, Vassar's gaffes, and quirky characters-especially Grandma Gerd and Hank-are what set this book apart. The epilogue, a quote from Pascal's Pensee, is the most thought-provoking part of this good beach read.-Ed Goldberg.