Just a dance or the best night of your life? Trying on innumerable dresses. Losing weight. Hiring a limo. Stressing about asking someone or being asked to the prom. Corsages, boyfriends, girlfriends, dancing, and possibly condoms that match the school colors. Then imagine your prom being cancelled. That is what almost happened to Ashley Hannigan and friends.

Unbelievably enough, a teacher stole the prom money. Ashley and friends scramble to make the prom happen. She has to cut classes in order to make arrangements to help the prom committee. Finding a hotel, handling security with the local precinct: it all takes an incredible amount of work.

Ashley lives with her three brothers, aged 12, 10, and 4 years old ("the Three Musketeers") and taxicab driver dad and bus driver mom. Boyfriend TJ shows up now and again. Ashley makes money by wearing a rat costume and waitressing pizza. 

Mom is obsessed with her daughter's prom dress, at the same time she cares for her increasingly obvious fetus. Could skipping classes, accruing large library fines and skipping detention conspire together to prevent Ashley from experiencing her dream night? 

Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson, 2005

I have never been to a prom, so it was interesting for me to read about it. I like the cover of the book, which features part of a prom dress caught in the rear door of a limo, with a flower for a corsage stuck on the trunk. One thing that I do not like about the book is its occasional foul language.

• Books about poverty
• Books about proms
• Books about wheelchairs
• Books by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Laurie Halse Anderson's web site