Though Britney Spears plans to lose her schoolgirl image for an as yet untitled album due this fall, her literary efforts remain strictly G rated. ''A Mother's Gift,'' the novel she coauthored with her mom, Lynne, shares the same wholesome tone as the pair's first collaborative effort, the nonfiction bestseller ''Heart to Heart.''
The Spearses say they envisioned their fictional tome -- the story of musically gifted teen Holly Faye Lovell's journey from her humble Southern home to fame and fortune in showbiz -- as a ''Danielle Steel novel for a younger audience.'' Yet despite big city temptations (alcohol, hooking up, flashy clothes) offered by a worldly pal named Ditz, Holly maintains her small town values.
Is ''Gift'' just another case of crass commercialism, a celebrity vanity project gone mainstream? (Delacorte is banking on a bestseller: A first printing of 500,000 copies landed in bookstores for ''Gift'''s April 10 release -- just in time for Mother's Day.) Or have the Spearses, like Dickens and Dostoysevsky before them, found a literary means of tackling the most profound issues of our time?
You decide. Here's EW.com's parse of ''A Mother's Gift'':
The Spearses rage against the vast schism between the world's Haves and Have Nots.
''Holly had dreamed about being a student at Haverty... but Haverty wasn't for regular people like her and her mom and their friends. Haverty was filled with the best and brightest students from all over the country -- students whose parents had the big bucks to afford it. Holly and Wanda had little bucks.''
Like Nabokov's ''Lolita,'' ''Gift'' delves into the troubling issue of illicit prepubescent sexuality.
''There wasn't anything [Holly] couldn't tell her mom -- she could even ask her about sex. Not that she'd done anything that she had to worry about spilling. Wanda still loved telling the story of Holly's first grade school crush. Holly had stood on a stool and puckered, waiting for little Tucker Ritchie to kiss her. After she'd counted out loud to three and felt nothing, she'd opened her eyes in time to see Tucker running away.''
The authors compose a searing indictment of an educational system that allows rampant alcohol abuse among minors.
'''I don't suppose you'd want to slip some JD into that hot cocoa,' Ditz said mischievously when Holly returned from the vending machine with the cups in her hands.
'Huh?'
Ditz groaned. 'Jack Daniel's. And you call ME Ditz?'
Holly laughed. 'That sounds totally gross. No thanks.'''
The Spearses offer a strident call for social reform.
''The drinking, the casual way Ditz hooked up with boys, the partying. You didn't do those things if you were really happy inside.
'I know it must seem strange to you that we're content with so little,' Wanda told Ditz as Holly, no longer sure how content she really was, looked self consciously up at [their] homemade curtains.
'Strange?' To Holly's surprise, Ditz laughed. 'Not at all. I see why you're happy. You've got great friends, wonderful homecooked meals, and the coziest, snuggest place I've ever slept in.'
