Defining Dulcie  now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble,  Powell's, and best of all,  your local bookstore.

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Reviews for Defining Dulcie ...scroll down for more! "...an inextricable mix of sadness and humor, sorrow and hope, are the hallmark of this memorable first novel..." School Library Journal (starred review) "Acampora's work strikes a perfect balance between the serious and the comical."  VOYA (5Q 5P) "A carefully crafted, impressive debut."   Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Dulcie's deadpan wit, the quirky road-trip premise, and a cast of appealing adult and teen characters combine in this unusually strong first novel…” Booklist (starred review) "...a delightful book... as deep or as easy as the reader desires" KLIATT (starred review) "Acampora is one to watch." Kirkus Reviews "a delightful story about a girl who loves..." Eclectica Magazine

Booklist April 1, 2006... Starred Review!!
"I was a John Jacob Jerome High School janitor like my dad," Dulcie explains in her droll, up-front manner, referring to her after-school job. "So far I'd lived to tell about it." Her father had not-dying suddenly after a freak encounter with toxic fumes. Now Dulcie's mother wants to escape their small Connecticut town, and whisks Dulcie away to California. Grieving for both her father and her old, comfortable life, the plucky teen borrows her mom's Chevy truck and drives back home to live and work with her grandfather, a janitor at the same school. During a transformative summer, she and her loving family-reconciled Mom included-rally to help another student janitor through a crisis of her own. Dulcie's deadpan wit, the quirky road-trip premise, and a cast of appealing adult and teen characters combine in this unusually strong first novel, which may remind some of Joan Bauer's Rules of the Road (1998). Despite an unfortunate cover image, which depicts a girl who appears much younger than Dulcie's 16 years, many YAs will connect to an outwardly tough character who can nonetheless admit that sometimes she "feel[s] very breakable." An affecting, engaging family story, uniquely told through the janitor's lens. -Anne O'Malley   

VOYA (April 2006)… 5Q 5P (VOYA’s highest rating!)
If sixteen-year-old Dulcie Jones were making a movie of her life, she would cast Harrison Ford as her father-and rewrite the screenplay so that Ford would live. Dulcie's life is not a film, and her father does not survive, but her life moves on. Following her father's funeral, Dulcie and her mother relocate to California, where Dulcie feels disconnected from her New England roots. Even after weeks gazing at San Francisco Bay, Dulcie misses home, so when her mother makes plans to sell her father's '68 Chevy pickup, Dulcie makes her own bold move. Stealing the truck, she drives back to Connecticut to live with her grandfather and return to her job as his student janitor at the local high school. Dulcie finds unexpected friendship upon returning, and the bond that she forms with her new coworker, Roxanne Soule, redefines both their lives when Roxanne leaves her abusive home. Acampora's first novel is a splendidly unpretentious story about the resiliency of the human spirit. It is a consummate blend of clever dialogue and engaging narrative peppered with Dulcie's hilarious and heartwarming reminiscences about the places she visits on her cross-country journey. Acampora's work strikes a perfect balance between the serious and the comical. His strong and delightfully human characters are sure to appeal across gender lines. Recommended for skilled and reluctant readers ages ten and up, Dulcie's story will particularly appeal to those who enjoy reading Joan Bauer, Sharon Creech, and Richard Peck. Make room for Dulcie on your bookshelves now.-Sherry Korthals 5Q 5P M J S Copyright 2006 Voya Reviews.

 
Publishers Weekly (March 13, 2006)… Starred Review!!Acampora deftly mixes the bitter with the sweet throughout this first novel. Sixteen-year-old Dulcie Morrigan Jones's father, a janitor at her high school, has just died as a result of inadvertently mixing together and inhaling two chemically incompatible cleaning solutions. "Isn't losing Dad enough of a change-" the narrator asks when her mother announces that the two of them will be moving from Connecticut to California. After bidding farewell to her beloved grandfather, Frank, Dulcie and her mother head west in her father's 1968 Chevy pickup. When Dulcie's mother later decides to trade in the pick-up, the prospect of losing this remnant of her father is too much, and Dulcie drives it back to the home she cannot leave behind. She moves in with Frank, also a janitor, and spends the summer working with him and another student, Roxanne. Much of the novel's charm grows out of Dulcie's budding friendship with Roxanne, who is coping with an abusive mother, and the humor bandied about between the two girls and Frank. Dulcie's narrative realistically mixes joy and pain in reminiscences about her father and her solo cross-country journey, which included visits to the Kansas Fainting Goat Farm and the Shrine of Holy Relics in Ohio. Reflecting on her Ohio stop, Dulcie muses that her father's truck, the dictionaries he gave to her, and her grandfather's kitchen table "were my own relics-pieces and fragments of places and people that I could hold and remember." A carefully crafted, impressive debut. Ages 10-up.(Apr.)

KLIATT, March 2006… Starred Review!!
Journeys in YA novels are usually metaphors for life. Sometimes taking a trip is the best move young fictional heroines can make. In contrast, this book is about a journey home and making a life there. When Dulcie’s beloved father, the high school janitor in a long line of janitors, fatally mixes “chemically incompatible” cleaning solutions, her mother drags her to California so they can reinvent themselves. The problem is, Dulcie doesn’t want to be reinvented. She wants to be who she already is. So, she steals her dad’s ‘68 Chevy truck and drives back Connecticut alone. Back home, she moves in with her grandfather and returns to work as a part-time janitor. Keeping things clean and orderly is satisfying work, both metaphorically and realistically. As Dulcie puts her life back together and makes new friends, she remembers scenes from her cross-country journey, all of which taught her about how to live life joyously by paying attention. This is a delightful book full of interesting little scenes that portray some of the oddities and wonders of American life, reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s assertion, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” This sentiment is so true that Dulcie ultimately realizes that her path is not everyone’s path, including her mother’s. This is a good book for all teens and can be as deep or as easy as the reader desires. Myrna Marley, Assoc. Prof of English, BYY Provo UT.

Eclectica Magazine (April/May 2006)
In the first few pages of Paul Acampora's book, Dulcie Jones suffers the sudden and awful loss of her father. In the midst of dealing with her shock and grief, Dulcie's mother drops another bombshell into her teenage daughter's life--she decides that the two of them need to leave behind the small Connecticut town they have lived in all of Dulcie's life and make a new start in California. Dulcie has no choice, and says goodbye to her grandfather and her job to do what her mother wants. But big surprise--California is not what Dulcie needs nor is her mother's new life anything that she wants to be part of. So Dulcie decides to head back to the only home she has ever known and steals her father's pickup truck in order to do it.

From the moment she leaves California, Defining Dulcie seems to be on track as a bit of an unorthodox but predictable teenage road trip novel. But, well, it turns out that there is nothing in Dulcie's life that is going to go as planned. She ends up diverting from the main highway a few times, to see some fainting goats, The Shrine of the Holy Relics and The Great American Museum of Custodial Safety. Everywhere she stopped she sent postcards to her mother and everything she saw made her think a bit more about where she wanted to be and who she really was. By the time she arrives at her grandfather's she is ready to go back to work at his side at John Jacob Jerome High School as a janitor and she knows for sure that she does not want to live in California.

Can you sense the mother/daughter drama building here?

There is more to the story though, particularly in the character of Roxanne, a classmate who also works as a janitor at the school and is hiding a painful secret about her home life. Mostly though Defining Dulcie is just a delightful story about a girl who loves her grandfather and loves all the intricacies of doing a job well while taking the time to better understand the people and world around her. I really liked this kid, I liked how she took the time to see what there was to see on her trip back home and I liked how she was determined to grieve for her father in her own way. Dulcie's mother is not a bad person, she just isn't Dulcie and I thought it was pretty cool that Acampora was able to convey that message so well, while not having to rely on caricatures of bad parenting to get his point across.

Ultimately, of course, Dulcie and her mother have to work out where she is going to live. And there is also the situation with Roxanne that must be considered. Throughout the book the grandfather provides a warm and stabilizing presence--he is one wickedly cool guy--thus giving both the teenage girls an adult they can count on. It's all very well written and effectively told and although Defining Dulcie might seem like a simple story it could very easily have been a badly told one. I thought it was just great and certainly hope that after this debut Acampora continues to work in the young adult genre. – Colleen Mondore

Children's Literature
When Dulcie's father dies unexpectedly on the job of toxic fumes—he was a janitor—Mom decides a fresh start in California is just what they need. Dulcie is unconvinced but at sixteen is unable to make her vote count. In California, Mom decides to sell Dad's '68 Chevy pickup and Dulcie is pushed over the edge. Armed with her mother's credit card, she takes off and drives back to Connecticut and her grandfather. She spends the summer working with her grandfather, befriending Roxanne, and adjusting to life without her parents. When Roxanne's mother becomes abusive, Dulcie begins to understand the importance of parents—but the story does not end with everything tied up in a bow. The writing is witty and the characters are interesting, to say the least. 2006, Dial/Penguin, Ages 10 to 14. - Joan Kindig, Ph.D.