A Girl Named Mister

writ­ten by Nik­ki Grimes
Zon­der­van, August 2010
young adult novel

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A Girl Named Mister

About the Book

Mary Rudine, called Mis­ter by almost every­one, has attend­ed church and sung in the choir for as long as she can remem­ber. But then she meets Trey. His long lash­es and smooth words make her ques­tion what she knows is right, and one mis­take leaves her hid­ing a grow­ing secret.

Mary is excit­ed about her upcom­ing wed­ding, and has done every­thing accord­ing to Jew­ish law. So when an angel appears one night and tells her — a vir­gin — she’ll give birth, Mary can’t help but feel con­fused, and soon finds her­self strug­gling with the great­est bless­ing the world will ever know.

Feel­ing aban­doned, Mis­ter is drawn to Mary’s sto­ry, and togeth­er both young women dis­cov­er the depth of God’s love and the mys­ter­ies of his divine plan.

Awards and Recognition

  • Nation­al Par­ent­ing Prod­ucts Award

Resources

Reviews

Mary Rudine, known to every­one as Mis­ter, is a typ­i­cal high-school stu­dent, engaged in stud­ies, sports and church. Every­thing changes when she gives into sex­u­al pres­sure from a new boy in her life. When she resists con­tin­u­ing a phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship, Trey breaks up with her, and Mis­ter works to get back to an emo­tion­al even keel. One source of solace is a book of poems in the voice of the Vir­gin Mary. As she returns to nor­mal, she is rocked with the real­iza­tion that she is preg­nant … This nov­el in poet­ry looks clear­ly at both teen preg­nan­cy and strug­gles with faith. Mis­ter is excep­tion­al­ly well char­ac­ter­ized … The lan­guage is inti­mate and imme­di­ate. (Kirkus Reviews)

Four­teen-year-old Mary Rudine, nick­named M. R. and then just Mis­ter, wears a promise ring, a sym­bol of her com­mit­ment to God and deci­sion to wait for true love before she has sex. But in one brief moment, gor­geous smooth-talk­ing Trey, with his gen­tle, seduc­tive hands, weak­ens her resolve, and she gets preg­nant. In ter­ri­fied denial, she picks up a book about the Vir­gin Mary, which details a sim­i­lar strug­gle with her fate and her faith. In alter­nat­ing, free-verse nar­ra­tives, Grimes par­al­lels the sto­ries of both Marys — their joy and ter­ror as they car­ry a child, the sup­port they accept from those who love them, and above all, their strug­gle to trust in God’s will for their lives. With each care­ful­ly cho­sen word, each well-craft­ed image, the famil­iar teen preg­nan­cy sto­ry is made unique by its faith-based under­tones, dual per­spec­tives, and lyri­cal lan­guage. (Frances Brad­burn, Book­list)

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