Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee

Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee

YA fiction
"I thought my excitement about my internship would take the edge
off my meloncholy over doing our last show, but it doesn't. I still
have a last-day-of-sixth-grade feeling. All year you're excited for
school to end so you can move on to junior high, but then the day
comes and you realize that was something that was an important part of
your life is dying..."
Transitions in life can carry complex mixtures of emotions--even
ones you're excited about. The months leading up to grad school for
me were a classic example. I was, at the same time, excited that I
was finally about to embark on such an adventure and terrified that
I'd flunk out my first semester. As Jeff Zentner shows readers in
Payne and Delilah's Midnite Matinee, the post high school transition
can be rife with mixed feelings and confusion.
Protagonists and best friends, Josie and Delia, are the cohosts
of a public access tv show, Midnite Matinee. They personalize obscure
and fairly mediocre horror movies from the past by interspersing skits
between scenes in the personas of Rayne Ravenscroft and Delilah
Darkwood. Delia has just barely managed graduation requirements.
She's hired a private detective to track down the father who walked
out of her life ten years ago. Her greatest fear is that Josie will
leave her the way everyone she comes to care about seems to. Josie
wants to attend college locally and stay with the show and Delia. But
her parents are pressuring her to go to school in a bigger city where
she can get an internship that they feel will move her further toward
her career.
A road trip offers them tantelizing possibilities. Perhaps a
celebrity they've been in touch with will help them take their show to
the next level. Maybe Delia will finally meet her father and learn
why he left her and never looked back.
Jump in the car and find out exactly how far they go and where
they end up. It's quite the expedition.
On a personal note, the scariest transition of my life was the
children leaving home one. I wondered if the best years of my life
were over. I wondered who I was apart from being a mother.
Fortunately I set out to rediscover myself instead of settling for
purgatory in the form of fast food or retail. And today I am living
my dream.
A great big shout out goes out to all who are making big transitions
in the upcoming graduation season.
jules hathaway





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