What if your mom moved the two of you to an artist colony for the whole summer against your will? Poor Raine, she couldn't even talk, much less find a phone to call her grandpa for help!
Raine makes some important decisions this summer and meets some very
interesting people at Sparrow Road. While Raine's mom is cooking and
cleaning, Raine pretty much can do what she wants (except talk) and
gains a new perspective on her mother and actually makes friends with
the silence. I love the way Raine started writing herself, using her
imagination and from morsels of information tucked away in the secrets
of the main house.
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| Here I am with author Sheila O'Conner! |
Lucky me, I was fortunate to be able to meet Sheila O'Connor at our librarians' inservice and hear her story of how this novel came to be. We have a place in common—Red Wing—she wrote while in Red Wing at the Anderson Center. In fact, the idea of the artist colony at the Center gave her the idea for the setting for this book. Pretty cool.
Pura Belpré Medal book award winner, The Dreamer caught my eye right away with the title and art. (It's okay, you can pick a book by its cover!) Then I received an added bonus—it was a very interesting and unusual book. Neftali Reyes is a real person and I learned about his childhood in this fictionalized biography filled with drawings and poetry. You may know him as Pablo Neruda, a very famous poet from Chile. He even won the Nobel Prize for his poetry. Becoming a poet had its challenges and one of which was his father who was verbally abusive and didn't want his son to be interested in words. But growing up, the sickly Neftali spent hours dreaming and captured the essence of life in simple but exquisite language. Learn about this awesome poet either with this chapter book, or this children's picture book, shown on the right.
