A Time for Growing and Learning

Princess Ashley by Richard Peck (Delacorte Press: $14.95; 208 pages)

“Books at their most worthwhile,” writes author Richard Peck, “are the success stories of people who manage to prevail in trying times . . . those who have taken independent action.” His intent may be to persuade teen-agers to take independent action and resist peer pressure, but his method, through a long list of popular, award-winning books, is to entertain. Peck is a master at creating tension that keeps the reader turning pages; he withholds just enough information to hook you.

The story of “Princess Ashley” is told by Chelsea Olinger and begins just before the start of Chelsea’s sophomore year. It begins with a familiar battle: She and her mother are completing a 1,000-mile drive to their new home. Like the mothers of most 15-year-olds, Mrs. Olinger is, by her daughter’s lights, wrong about everything.

Chelsea doesn’t want the children at her new school to know what kind of work her mother does. Her mother tries to convince her that the secrecy is dishonest and unworkable. “People are going to find out you’re my daughter,” Mom argues on Page 7. “People are going to know what I do for a living. You’ll just feel silly when they find out.” The argument gets her nowhere, and it’s not until Page 81 that the reader finds out what Mrs. Olinger does--Peck keeps you on the hook that long.

The first person Chelsea meets is Craig, a combination of Rob Lowe and Bruce Springsteen. Then Ashley Packard makes her entrance. Ashley doesn’t look like a princess--she wears braces, no makeup--but she knows she’s a princess, and so does everybody else. Amazingly, Chelsea finds herself admitted into a rich and stylish circle.

Fortunately for Chelsea--and for the reader--she also meets a wonderful character named Pod, a downhome kid who thinks L. L. Bean is a vegetable, preferring his own idea of a designer label: Caterpillar Tractor on the front of his long-billed cap and Peterbilt on his belt buckle. He wears a white undershift full of holes and grips his fork like a bike handle. “I’m just an old flop-eared country boy, come into town for a little learning,” he says, and you know he’s putting you on.

He and Ashley and Chelsea wind up in the same creative writing class where Pod produces poetry (“Gimme my red-eye gravy, my Coors, and my grits / And a day in the saddle till it hurts where I sits”) and works on a Bunyanesque novel. Eventually Chelsea finds out what’s really beneath the cowboy facade, but stringing out the discovery is part of Peck’s technique.

“Princess Ashley” has the basic ingredients of a teen-age romance novel--dances, parties, boys, cars, fashions. It also has the basic ingredients of a teen-age “problem novel”--underage drinking and divorced parents, step-parents and parents who don’t understand. But Richard Peck knows how to take that basic stuff and make it into a good story. It covers two years, from sophomore through senior summer--long enough to give relationships a chance to develop and change. By the end of the book there is both tragedy and resolution. Relationships have been worked out, Ashley is no longer the princess, Chelsea has gained new insights and maturity, and Pod, the flop-eared country boy, has established himself as one of the most winning characters in young adult fiction.