I’m looking for a book that I would have read no later than 1992. It was almost certainly published in the mid/late 80s or very early 90’s. A light, funny YA (possibly upper-middle grade or tween) book in the vein of Ellen Conford or Paula Danziger, although I don’t believe it was actually by either of them. The version I read was a hardcover, with an illustrated cover that was more cartoonish than realistic. I believe the cover features a girl in a dumpster or garbage can, although it’s possible that was just an episode in the book that I’m conflating with the cover in my memory.
It’s about a girl who wants to be an investigative reporter. She’s working for the school newspaper and begins to uncover some kind of light mystery. (Not a murder or anything like that.) The most specific thing that sticks out in my mind is that the girl and her friend use a lot of lingo and abbreviations in casual conversation, including the shorthand “L.L.A.” to mean “lifelong ambition.”
I believe the title has the girl’s name in it. I feel like the title might have a similar construction to Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great, although it’s obviously not that book. The book is also not Buffalo Brenda by Jill Pinkwater. Anyway, it’s driving me crazy. (I still think about my L.L.A.’s all the time.) Please help me put this to rest!
I’m the person who submitted the request. Thought of this after I submitted: this is not an Anastasia Krupnik book, but that probably would be most apt comparison in terms of tone/target audience. (Closer than the Danziger/Conford comparison.)
Harriet the Spy?
I can’t find enough info on the plot to confirm it, but hopefully the title alone would ring some bells. Maybe it’s MYSTERIOUSLY YOURS, MAGGIE MARMELSTEIN by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
I wonder if it could be Lois Lowry’s ‘The One Hundredth Thing about Caroline’? It’s many years since I’ve read it, but it is a children’s/YA mystery, where one of the two heroines wishes to be an investigative reporter (I don’t remember the ‘L.L.A.’ phrase but as I say I haven’t read it in a long time). And it’s by the same author as the Anastasia Krupnik books, so there are many stylistic similarities, though it has a rather different type of plot.
Write On, Rosy! by Sheila Greenwald.
Claudia Mills wrote the “Dinah” series, one of which (“Dinah for President!”) had a girl holding a trash can above her head. Not sure about the L.L.A. phrase, but Dinah’s personality seems to fit this.
I’m pretty sure this is Write On, Rosy. “When Rosy realizes she does not have a life-long ambition like her best friend Hermione, she decides to become an investigative reporter and investigates Headmistress Gormley with unexpected results.”
Write On, Rosy is 100% correct. Thank you! You guys are geniuses.