Once upon a time I read this book and remem­ber it as being hilar­i­ous, and remem­ber laugh­ing aloud as I read it.  I pur­chased it so I could re-read it.  Some­times it works out and the magic is recap­tured.  This time? Not so much.

The pro­tag­o­nist of My Mother Made Me! is Jane Tivik, a Cana­dian high schooler, and her friends Marna, Car­lie, and Steph.  They like hang­ing out and even if it is bor­ing, it’s still sum­mer.   Dur­ing one of their hang­out ses­sions, Car­lie announces that her mother is going to chal­lenge the “only boys play hockey” tra­di­tion. Their town, Ames­bury, Ontario, is a hockey town.  So many boys play hockey that the rink has teams sched­uled start­ing at 5 am.

Even if girls wanted to play, there’s no rink time avail­able.  Instead, girls play ringette in other towns, which (cor­rect me if I’m wrong, Cana­di­ans) is like hockey, only instead of a puck, there is a rub­ber ring that is picked up instead of shot like a puck.  The four friends have no inter­est in hockey, but soon Jane’s mother is eager for her to play.  Jane’s dad is chair of Amesbury’s hockey asso­ci­a­tion, and has no desire to fight this battle.

When Jane’s mother tells her that she wishes for the same oppor­tu­ni­ties that Jane has, Jane begins to under­stand some of her mother’s moti­va­tion, but still doesn’t want to play hockey.  In the midst of the hockey drama, Cousin Alli­son comes to visit from Chicago.  She is Cana­dian like Jane, but she’s also older, beau­ti­ful (aren’t they always?) and extremely well-dressed.

Alli­son comes up with a plan for the girls to avoid play­ing hockey.  It involves them run­ning away and hid­ing in the rink since it’s shut down for the sum­mer.  They can shower and cook there, and once their par­ents see the error of their ways, they can return home.  This plan works great, except for the part where Jane for­gets to leave the let­ter with their rea­son for leav­ing, which also includes the demand that they not be forced to play hockey.  The moms turn this to their advan­tage, pro­claim­ing that the girls ran away because they wanted to play hockey and the town wouldn’t let them.

Sand­wiched into the story is a short romance between Jane and Bill, a boy she’s known since kinder­garten, and much dis­cus­sion of Jane’s love of the “romance” known as The Great Gatsby.  Marna, Car­lie, and Steph are more than Jane’s side­kicks.  Marna’s younger sis­ter Jenny wants to play hockey, but there are no leagues for her to play in.  Marna doesn’t want to play, but rec­og­nizes what an oppor­tu­nity this would be for Jenny if she did.  Car­lie and Steph are best friends, but over­weight Car­lie is con­stantly being called fat by Steph.  Of course it’s for Carlie’s own good, but what kind best friend says things like that?  The cover even fea­tures a heavy girl with a dou­ble chin.  If Steph were a char­ac­ter in a book writ­ten, she would totally be the Mean Girl.

For a book that was only 120 pages long, there was a lot of fem­i­nist sub­text going on OUTSIDE of the hockey.  This book was writ­ten in 1978, so there were a lot of changes that had occurred and were about to occur, so it kind of makes sense.  Jane spends a lot of time think­ing about looks and how women are judged by them, even as she admits she does it too.

A hand­some male char­ac­ter dates a girl who is not very pretty, and he uses her to prop up his ego.  Jane comes across him try­ing to per­suade her to put out, and then the boy hits on Jane when his girl­friend leaves.  Jane catches her­self falling for his lines and has to remind her­self that he’s a jerk, even though she just saw him treat his girl­friend like crap.  Jane dis­cov­ers that Alli­son plays hockey in Chicago.  In the end, the girls don’t play hockey them­selves, but do take plea­sure in watch­ing girls like Jenny get their chance.

After read­ing this a sec­ond time, I have a hard time under­stand­ing what I saw in it the first time.  Maybe I didn’t “get” the emo­tion behind the moth­ers want­ing their girls to play sports because when I read it, Title IX had been in effect for many years, and I already had those oppor­tu­ni­ties.  I also don’t see what was so funny the first time.

As stated ear­lier, this book did not hold up for me.

Graded by me 25 years ago: A

Graded by me today: D

This book is out of print.  It was pub­lished by Scholas­tic in 1978, and the copy I have was printed in 1986.  World­Cat shows that 11 libraries world­wide own it, and 7 are in Canada.  If you want my copy, it’s yours!