11 Birthdays

by Wendy Mass, 267 pages

11 Birthdays is a 2011-2012 Mark Twain Award Nominee. The plot is ripped off from Groundhog Day, the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray, but I'm not complaining. In fact, I'd like to see that plot ripped off as much as possible because that movie is awesome and I like thinking about Bill Murray.

Amanda and Leo are best friends born on the same day. They've celebrated all 10 of their birthdays together, but on their tenth birthday, they had a falling out. Now their eleventh birthday is approaching, and for the first time, they'll have separate parties. Amanda is upset about their fight, the fact that Leo will probably have a cooler party than her, and her fear that she isn't as popular as her friends. Her fears are confirmed on her birthday-- she and Leo don't talk, she messes up her audition for the gymnastics team, her party is sparsely attended, and to top it off, her mom gets fired.

The next morning, Amanda wakes up to find it's her birthday again. And again. And again. She discovers the same thing is happening to Leo-- they're living their birthday over and over. They realize they have to team up to find a way to get unstuck in time. They explore town legends, family history, and their friendship to find the anwer.

One interesting thing about this book is that although Wendy Mass doesn't mention Groundhog Day, it's clear the book was written in a post-Groundhog Day world. When Amanda and Leo realize they're stuck, their first instinct is to try to be better people, because come on, everyone knows if you get stuck in time you have to be nicer. They help strangers, they're extra pleasant to their parents, they turn their homework in on time, and in the morning, they're dismayed to discover that none of it worked. It took Bill Murray 3/4 of the movie to figure out he had to be nice, but Amanda and Leo think of it immediately. Actually, their solution is a lot more complicated than Bill Murray's. If Bill Murray had to go through everything Leo and Amanda did, he'd still be stuck in Punxatawney.