Fifteen
Beverly Cleary
 Jane Purdy is a 15-year-old student at Woodmont High School in California. She dreams of having a boyfriend like blonde, popular, and sophisticated 16-year-old Marcy Stokes has. Jane feels somewhat left out of social circles at her high school, and envies the more popular girls who go out on dates, seem more confident and wear more expensive clothes. One day while babysitting, she meets 16-year-old Stan Crandall, who is a delivery boy for a pet-food store. Jane is immediately attracted to Stan, although she does not believe that he will be attracted to her as she forgets to pretend to be sophisticated during their brief encounter. However, Stan calls her later, and asks her out on a date.Jane is extremely upset but it turns out that Stan asked Bitsy to the dance before he met Jane and he feels he cannot break the date now even though he is not attracted to Bitsy. Jane and Stan's relationship fluctuates throughout the book. Jane constantly analyses her status with Stan, worrying about whether she's ready to date someone without scaring him off. After another outing, Jane takes Stan's unusually quiet and detached behavior as a sign that he's tired of her, but later she learns that he is sick with appendicitis. In the end, Stan reassures Jane that she's his girlfriend, and gives her his ID bracelet as a symbol that they are going steady.