Delve Into Rules Of The Road (Rules Of The Road, #1) Designed And Illustrated By Joan Bauer Accessible As Paperbound

charming and uplifting young adult novel, I read this to help some of my students who are reading it, A good book that covers a variety of deep topics and focuses on the strength of people, I think Joan Bauer is one of the best YA authors out there, This book was tight. Great's vibe, cool characters, fun adventures, a heroine growing into herself while dealing with some dad issues, The only cringe moment I had was when she did a eulogy for a man she knew for a month, But there was something nice about this competent young woman working an interesting job in a well described cityscape, Also, the dialogue.

"I held up my license and chirped out, "My passport to new worlds, Murray, Adventure. Romance. Freedom. "

"The romance dies, kid, the first time you're wedged between two Mack trucks at rush hour on the Eisenhower Expressway, " Jenna is anything but a regular teen girl, She stands taller than most boys at',", she is obsessed with her job at a shoe store, she only has one friend, her father is an alcoholic, and her home life is spent trying to protect her younger sister.
So, when Jenna is offered an anything but regular job to drive the owner of the shoe company she works for, Gladstone Shoe Stores, to Texas to stop her son from forcing her to retire, Jenna is eager to accept.
She can finally escape the troubles of her life, and find new experiences on the road,

The further she drives with old Ms, Gladstone, though, the more wrapped up Jenna becomes in the transfer of the shoe company, For the first time, Jenna begins to understand how to stand up for what is right, both on the road, in Texas, and perhaps even in her own home.


Jenna started out as a kind of dorky characater, and I loved watching her turn into the strong, fearless girl the book ended with.
I loved the author's attention to detail on the fine points of the shoe company, and the fight for quality rather than profits in the profitoriented economy was on point.
Watching Jenna learn how to deal with her alcoholic father and how to help him, and herself, was a fantastic sub plot, and it was written very well for a touchy topic.


Those of you who know me, know that I'm not the biggest fan of travel books, However, I had high hopes for this book, considering the character has my name, and this book did not disappoint! One star taken away because the character's personalities didn't blend well with mine, but that is totally a preference thing.
Definitely recommend as a quick, enjoyable read! I'm still on my nostalgia tour through my middle school reads, I think one of the reasons that I became a librarian is all the books I read in the summers when I was still too young for a summer job, aside from baby sitting.
I loved the library, it was my haven and escape,

Anyway, Rules of the Road was a great summer read when I first read it, Sixteen year old Jenna Boller works parttime in the Gladstone shoe store, and is a natural shoe salesperson, with great interpersonal instincts, She loves her job. Her family life is difficult because her father is an alcoholic, who refuses to change, When she is offered the job of driving Gladstone's owner, Madeline Gladstone for the summer, she jumps at the chance to escape her circumstances for a while.



This book taugh me about shoes, life, driving, and a little bit about being a stalkholder, It is about a girl named Jenna, She is a great shoe salesman, but she has no idea how to deal with her dad who is an alchoholic, When the president of Gladstone Shoe Stores, Mrs, Gladstone, invites her to be her chauffeur for the summer she agrees, mostly because her dad is in town and he is stalking Jenna and her sister, Faith.

Jenna and Mrs. Gladstone visit all the Gladstone Stores in between Chicago and Texas, Jenna meets Harry Bender who teaches her how to deal with her dad, Jenna even wishes that Harry Bender were her dad, I think because he is the only father figure she's ever had, She meets Alice Lovett, a retired shoe model, who gives Jenna fashion tips which help her with her self esteem, As she passes a shop window she thinks, for the first time, now there is a pretty young woman, She even gets to be a spy for a while!
Soon after Jenna meets him, Harry Bender dies, At the stockholders meeting Jenna makes a speech which convinces everyone to vote for Mrs, Gladstone to stay wth the new company, Mrs. Gladstone gains complete charge of quality control, and Jenna finally tells her dad how she feels about him being an alchoholic after reporting him for drunk driving.
Jenna and her grandmother go on the picnic that Jenna promised they would go on,
It was a nice story, I loved the fact that it was well written and you couldn't tell what was going to happen next, The way Jenna talks about it, being a shoe salesman actually sounds fun, and I caught myself imagining myself as a shoe salesman! This is one of of the trade books that we can read for our new curriculum.
I LOVED THIS BOOK!
One of my favorite quotes from it, “Now I see that it isnt the problems along the way that make us or break us.
Its how we learn to stand and face them that makes the difference, “ Im all for classical literature, but we need literature to address what our sweet, resilient students are going through I love stories that encourage students to push past their fears and be bold.
Librarians and believers in bibliotherapy listen upthis is a book for that young lady who doubts that she has anything to offer to anyone, a teen who has a substance abusing parent, a young person that thinks money is the answer to everything and for anyone that could use a fabulous book that will grab their heart and give them a chance for a good cry! Jenna's story is all that and more as she struggles to deal with an almost always absent or drunk father, a single parent home, and now a cranky old woman who needs a driver and help fighting a corporate takeover.
I loved this one and am now having trouble ranking Bauer's books because maybe this one needs to be my favorite, but that would mean moving Almost Home and Soar and Squashed and Sticks and so many other around on list of terrific "sadhappy heartbreakers" by author Joan Bauer.
She truly is a master at creating fabulous lead characters with real life crises and teaching lessons to that character as well as to the reader who is likely to be fully invested in the story.
I have already downloaded Jenna's second adventure, "Best Foot Forward" and can't wait to see what we all can learn from that one! This librarian recommends this book for readers of both genders in gradesand up and warns that tissue will be required in at least two scenes towards the Rules of the Road's conclusion.
Best book ever!!! Highly recommend it a new favorite! This is a charming comingofage story, Jenna loves working at Gladstone Shoes, An unexpected visit from the elderly owner of the company lands her a chaeffuer job, While driving her elderly boss across the country, she finds the courage to stop running away from her own problems and maybe help solve some of Mrs.
Gladstone's too.

This was incredibly sweet, perhaps too sweet, There are moments where you must suspend your belief, but it ultimately proved to be a worthwhile read, I will admit that it took me a long time to get through this

novel, It's not something I would normally pick up and took a while for me to get into, but overall it was really enjoyable and it hits varying emotional points.
Bauer plays with some serious topics such as alcoholism and greed and manages to make them lighthearted and thoughtful at the same time, It's filled with fantastic female characters and a very interesting bond forms between Mrs, Gladstone and Jenna. I've also never thought selling shoes would be so meaningful, but I was drinking the Gladstone koolaid early on in the book, just like Jenna, I would recommend this for young adult readers who enjoy clean realistic fiction,.

Nothing will ever beat Hope was Here, but this comes pretty close,.starsOnce again, Joan Bauer does not disappoint, Alternately humorous and touching in all the right places, with beautifully stated and illustrated wisdom, Recommended by a friend. A quick, fun read with some cute quirks and the occasional surprising twist, I loved Jenna's shoesense. Caution: her father is an alcoholic, and the impact of that is pretty clear, which is probably why this book is classed YA, Jenna Boller, ayear old high school student, has a parttime job at Gladstone's Shoes, When her father comes to the store drunk to make one of his sporadic visits to her, she is afraid that she will be fired, On the contrary, it is the beginning of a journey of selfdiscovery that she will make with her boss,

This YA novel is told with compassion and good humor and is a great primer for teens struggling with issues of codependency and low selfesteem.
Even as an adult, I found the book enjoyable with good life lessons along the way, I've struggled to read throughout the pandemic, This was a breath of fresh air, much more about the importance of shoes than any lessons on highway driving, with a protagonist you rooted for with every mile she traveled.
I loved her shoesalespersoncentric philosophy about the world, The ending was perhaps a bit too optimistic for my cynicalperspective, but I'm looking forward to returning to this book in a few years, just as I have with sitelinkHope Was Here for the pastyears or so.
Strong girl who overcame her past, . . and her treatment for the elderly was so nice, I absolutely loved this book! I found that parts of it were relatable in so many ways to things I have been through in my life, and even some of the things Im still going through now.

“So much sadness. So much pain. But remembering the good things thats what keeps anyone going, ” Rules of the Road This is the kind of book about women that the world needs, which is to say it is in no way chicklit.
The protagonist is an uglyduckling teenager who loves to sell shoes and chaffeurs hersomething boss around the midwestern and southern US, The majority of the book is spent with this teenage girl, who is anything but frivolous, and a hardasnails septuagenarian, There are a couple kindhearted shoes salesmen and a drunken father, but these are just bit parts, At this Rules of the Road's heart is a story about business and ageismromance is but briefly mentioned and brushed aside, These women are businessminded and empathetic in a way rarely seen in female characters, Both Jenna and Mrs. Gladstone show that women can be brutal businesswomen without being stonecold bitches,

Proof that not all books about females are about female concerns, Books about women can be, in fact, books about the world just the same way books about men are, If only more people would write books about women that weren't romances that perpetuate stereotypes,

Updated to add: Passes the Bechdel Test, handily: sitelink org/pmwiki/pmwiki. php .