Picked up this one, thinking of the time my two kiddos recruited a violist to play with them at our state fiddle contest. I was delighted to be in tears so quickly!
The MC's relationship with her french horn is beautiful. As a family of string players, I had never considered how hard it must be to make the horn play the correct notes, or to feel it vibrate in your bones.
The story tackles poverty, workers' rights and fear of German "aliens" right before the U.S.'s involvement in World War II. Characters navigate the complex social and familial ties and norms of the time period in a way that is true to heart.
Wonderfully well done!
This book, you know just from the title, to hunker down with a box of tissues.
It is also one of the few books for MG that I've read that deals with the idea of how authors can "steal" someone's life story, appropriate it for their own financial and societal (fame) benefit. It illustrates beautifully the pain and lasting damage that can be done.
Excellent read!
This one features a little girl with cancer, her big, supportive sister, and a very jealous "bully." The parents have to make tough choices that center mostly around paying for cancer treatments, and the community comes together to help. The MC also plays the piano, which is a plus, in our book! Guaranteed to tug on your heart-strings, and there's a warm fuzzy ending.
Ok, so the set-up for this one is a guaranteed tear-jerker. The MC is a boy who's losing his sight, and loves to draw comic books. The sole person at school who suddenly starts talking to him is a girl, whose brother is dying of progeria. Need I say more?
This story has lots of unrequited middle grade love and angst, against the tragic backdrop of Tornado Alley.
The MC's family's house is blown away, at the exact same time she's figuring out she likes girls. Her art journal, filled with potentially embarrassing drawings, disappears in the wind, and when it reappears, she mistakenly thinks another girl, a leukemia survivor, is the one who's found it and is stuffing pages and notes in her locker.
The MC develops a pash on the girl, who's just trying to experience all the things she missed when she was a sick child.
To make things worse (because that's what authors do to their characters, right? Make their lives miserable?), the MC's parents give her away to her former best-friend's family (!), and they miss her birthday.
Everything ends well, with all three girls as friends and the MC's family regaining its former good sense and bringing her back into the fold.
