First time novelist, Julia Claiborne Johnson, has written a fun, bittersweet story.  Alice Whitely, who works for a New York publishing house, has been asked to travel across the country to Los Angeles to play nanny to nine year old Frank Banning while his mother, Mimi, completes the novel she has promised Alice’s boss.  Frank is a complicated youngster-very intelligent, very sly and very different.  His knowledge of Hollywood trivia is exceptional yet his social skills with peers are pathetic.  How Alice handles this young dynamo, his aloof and secretive mother as well as other characters, is the plot of the novel.

Be Frank with Me is reminiscent of Where’d You Go, Bernadette.  Both have quirky characters who don’t fit in, don’t want to fit in, and thus must struggle to maintain their integrity.