Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls

The stories in this series are told by Allie Finkle, a nine-year-old girl. Allie has two brothers, Mark and Kevin. Her dad is a college professor, and her mother is a student adviser.

There are 6 books in the series created by Meg Cabot. I could only make in through the first two of them before my patience ran out. I'll tell you a little more about that later.


Here are the book titles.

1. Moving Day
2. The New Girl
3. Best Friends and Drama Queens
4. Stage Fright
5. Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out
6. Blast from the Past

The chapter titles in each book are Rules. There are more Rules scattered throughout the books as well.

In Moving Day, these are the chapter Rules.

1. Don't stick a spatula don't your best friend's throat.
2. Don't get a pet that poops in your hand.
3. If you don't want a secret spread around, don't tell it to Scott Stamphley.
4. Brothers - and parents - can be very insensitive.
5. You can't let your family move into a haunted house.
6. Whatever Brittany Hauser says, just do it if you know what's good for you.
7. First impressions are very important.
8. Don't put your cat in a suitcase.
9. When you do something wrong, always apologize (even if it's not entirely your fault).
10. If you get a new best friend, it's rude to show off about it.
11. When you finally figure out what the right thing to do is, you have to do it, even if you don't want to.
12. When you are setting a turtle free and people are chasing you, the best thing to do is hide.
13. You can't take your rocks with you.
14. Celebrities live by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
15. Don't judge a house by how it looks before you fix it up.
16. Don't be a braggart.

Those titles look more interesting than they really are or could have been. That's from Grandpa's perspective. Maybe, just maybe, it's different from a 3rd or 4th grader's point of view.

For me, the stories were decent but there was very little action. Everything seemed to move very slowly. Much of the storytelling involved explaining Allie's feelings about the topic at hand. That's fine, but I still wanted more to be happening more quickly.

Some of the Rules, even those in the chapter titles, aren't really rules. They are more like truths or guidelines. Calling them Rules is more a marketing ploy than a fact.

Several of the chapter Rules in The New Girl don't seem to line up with the content of the chapter, especially in chapters 4 through 8 or so.

For example, Rule #4 is When someone decides she is going to beat you up, the best thing to do is hide. In that chapter, Allie makes it to the final 10 spellers in the 4th grade Spelling Bee.

Again, Rule #7 is Ask old people what to do because they know everything. I was really interested to see what this chapter was about because I'm one of those old people. In the story, Grandma flies into town, and everyone goes to the airport to meet her. Then they all go to Red Lobster.

Allie doesn't ask Grandma anything! I was pretty disappointed.

As I mentioned above, perhaps a young girl will find these books more interesting due to the identification factor, but I think there are better books out there for the young reader.