Every Monday, it's a pleasure to link up with a group that reviews books they want to share with others. Come discover new books!
Visit Jen at Teach MentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who link up.
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Thanks to Candlewick Press for a copy of this book, out September 13th. The writing is good, offering a look into teenage thoughts as seven tell the story of three hours on a day, really like any other day, but not this time. It is harsh with strong language, and not a surprise that teens think and talk this way. Some of these seven we meet have connected online to commiserate with each other's tough lives, but it goes further, and ends in a plot for each to complete some kind of school shooting and then suicide. It's alarming and scary, and held together by one girl, April, whose birthday is April 19th, "the day". I would recommend this for older teens and their parents and teachers!
This is the quietest
book that begins to squeeze your heart, slowly, slowly, until you realize that
you are looking for things to wish on just like Charlie, but just for Charlie!
Charlie has been taken to her Aunt Bertha and Uncle Gus's home after it's been
determined that she is no longer in a stable environment. Her father is in jail
and her mother doesn't get out of bed. Her sister is about to graduate from
high school so gets to move in with a friend. Charlie is alone in what she
thinks of as a sad house in the Blue Ridge mountains, among those "awful"
hillbillies. She must finish her fifth grade year, and it's not a friendly
place. But Charlie doesn't exactly know how to make friends, and is also in
trouble with the teacher quite a bit. Sadly, this is not a sympathetic teacher,
although I kept hoping! It's after school is out that the story deepens. I
loved that Barbara O'Connor keeps Charlie surrounded with love, from Bertha and
Gus, from her only friend, Howard's family, from the setting and finally from a
stray dog, Wishbone. That's part of the sweet story too. A dog's love cures a
lot of things, and he helps Charlie, too. Without telling all the story, just
know that as others have said, it's worth reading and learning from the inside
out what a child who also feels like a stray wishes for every single day.