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Showing posts with label juvenile fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label juvenile fiction. Show all posts

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire LeGrande

In Some Kind of Happiness a young girl, Finley Hart, who is suffering from crippling anxiety, invents her own world, Everwood. She is surprised to find that Everwood is a real place, the woods behind her Grandparents’ house. While this could have been a simple story about magic, LeGrande’s story alternates between fantasy and Finley’s real-life traumas.

Finley has been sent to her grandparents’ house for the summer because her parents are having marital problems. Though Finley has never met her Dad’s family, she agrees to spend a summer with them.

Finley finds her Grandparents, Aunts and cousins, collectively known as The Harts, fascinating and intimidating at the same time. She longs  to be accepted by them because they seem to be the perfect family who are charitable, fun, and outgoing. They don’t have the anxiety problems that haunt her.

In her Everwood journal, Finley images herself to be an orphan girl who must keep the dark away from her precious woods. She wants to protect the Harts from the darkness but does not realize they are hiding their own dark secrets.

Brilliantly realized, this is a great story for young adults or middle schoolers.

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire LeGrande

In Some Kind of Happiness a young girl, Finley Hart, who is suffering from crippling anxiety, invents her own world, Everwood. She is surprised to find that Everwood is a real place, the woods behind her Grandparents’ house. While this could have been a simple story about magic, LeGrande’s story alternates between fantasy and Finley’s real-life traumas.

Finley has been sent to her grandparents’ house for the summer because her parents are having marital problems. Though Finley has never met her Dad’s family, she agrees to spend a summer with them.

Finley finds her Grandparents, Aunts and cousins, collectively known as The Harts, fascinating and intimidating at the same time. She longs  to be accepted by them because they seem to be the perfect family who are charitable, fun, and outgoing. They don’t have the anxiety problems that haunt her.

In her Everwood journal, Finley images herself to be an orphan girl who must keep the dark away from her precious woods. She wants to protect the Harts from the darkness but does not realize they are hiding their own dark secrets.

Brilliantly realized, this is a great story for young adults or middle schoolers.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Pie by Sarah Weeks

When Alice's Aunt Polly dies suddenly, Alice's world crumbles. The two had always enjoyed a close relationship and spent hours baking pies in Aunt Polly's pie shop. 

To her surprise, Aunt Polly bequeaths her disagreeable cat, Lardo, to her. The secret pie crust that has made the town famous goes, incredibly, to Lardo! But who would leave a pie crust recipe to a cat!

In the meantime, someone breaks into Aunt Polly's pie shop that is appropriately named Pie. The whole pie shop is damaged. Alice and Charlie try to solve the mystery of the pie shop break-in as well as the strange recipe bequeathment.

While solving these mysteries, Alice also attempts to figure out who she is and why her mother acts the way she does.

This is a delightful story for young readers who enjoy humor and small town mysteries.  

www.sarahweeks.com

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