Waiting for normal

Review by Booklist Review

We've seen this situation before: a parent neglects a child, while the child seeks a wider community to find support. Here that child is 12-year-old Addie, who lives with Mommers in a trailer on a busy street in Schenectady after her adored stepfather and half sisters move upstate. Mommers has lost custody of the littles  because of neglect, and though she and Addie can laugh together, once Mommers hooks up with Pete, she is not much for good times though she brings the bad times home. Addie finds solace in occasional visits to her sisters and in her neighbors, especially Soula, ill from her chemotherapy treatments. Connor takes a familiar plot and elevates it with smartly written characters and unexpected moments. Addie starts out being a kid who thinks she has to go along to get along, but as Mommers' actions become more egregious, her spine stiffens. And though Addie loves her time upstate, she is willing to forgo it when the normality she has there is more painful than positive. This is a meaningful story that will touch many.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2008 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Connor (Dead on Town Line) treats the subject of child neglect with honesty and grace in this poignant story. Addie's stepfather, Dwight, has always been the responsible one in the family. But after he and her mother divorce, and he gets custody of Addie's two younger half-sisters, it's up to Addie, a sixth-grader, to keep order in the tiny trailer that Dwight has found for Addie and her mother. While her mother disappears for days at a time with her new boyfriend, Addie cultivates friendships with people she meets at a neighboring convenience store, but the affection she receives from others doesn't compensate for the absence of love in her home. Addie works hard to fill the void her volatile mother creates, and Addie's attempts to make things "normal" result in some of the most moving scenes: she keeps the cabinets full by putting empty boxes of food on the shelf "for show." In such moments Connor shows both the extent to which Addie has been abandoned and just how resilient and resourceful she is. Characters as persuasively optimistic as Addie are rare, and readers will gravitate to her. Ages 10-up. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-8-"Normal" is the dream for 12-year-old Addie in this poignant novel (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books, 2008) by Leslie Connor. Her erratic mother and her adored step-father Dwight have divorced. Her stepsisters are living with Dwight, while Addie must move into a tiny trailer with her mother. Addie, the optimist, makes a cozy nest in the trailer, starts a new school, joins the orchestra, and begins to make new friends. Her mother complains about her circumstances and soon takes up with Pete and leaves Addie alone for days on end. It is not until a near tragedy occurs that she is rescued from her neglectful mother. Narrator Angela Rogers skillfully delivers the first-person narration and nicely captures Addie's confident voice. Listeners will root for Addie as she comes to accept her mother's shortcomings and finds the home she longs for with Dwight and her sisters. For a more heart-wrenching story about neglect, point students to The True Colors of Caitlynne Jackson (Delacorte, 1997) by Carol Lynch Williams.-Tricia Melgaard, Centennial Middle School, Broken Arrow, OK (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Horn Book Review

(Intermediate, Middle School) "Me, I'm good at getting used to things -- been doing it all my life." Twelve-year-old Addison lives in a trailer in Schenectady with her mother, never knowing how long -- a few hours, a few days, a week -- her moody, unreliable mom will be gone, off with a new boyfriend. Despite a bevy of concerned individuals (including her former stepfather Dwight; Elliot, the gay owner of the nearby mini-mart; and Elliot's best friend Soula, a cancer patient with a jovial disposition), Addie fends for herself and keeps her mother's absences a secret. Connor convincingly portrays Addie's beyond-her-years resourcefulness and the opposing feelings that drive her to protect the life she has while longing to be a permanent part of the "normal" home her half-sisters occupy with her stepfather. Occasionally the dialogue, especially between Addie and her mini-mart friends, gets folksy and sappy; but overall Addie's commonsense approach to her problems keeps the sentimentality in check. Soula's description of the hibiscus tree in a nearby barbershop window applies to Addie as well: she is "willing to bloom in conditions [she] was never meant to encounter." (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

A heroine with spunk and spirit offers an inspiring lesson in perseverance and hope. When a young girl's parents divorce, she's separated from her stepfather and her two young half-sisters. Life is far from normal as Addie and her irresponsible mother settle into a tiny trailer on the corner of an urban intersection. Addie admits, "I'm good at getting used to things--been doing it all my life," and immediately makes a cozy nest for herself in the trailer. She optimistically starts sixth grade, makes friends, meets her neighbors and keeps house on a shoestring while her unpredictable mother spends days sleeping and nights chatting on the Internet. Challenged by dyslexia, Addie works extra hard to succeed in school and learn her flute part in the orchestra. Yearning for a "normal" life, Addie's shaken when her stepfather and sisters move away leaving her on her own with her moody mother who disappears for days. Disappointed and alone, Addie realistically makes the best of a bad situation. In the end, her positive attitude and ability to find happiness make all the difference as she patiently waits for "normal." First-rate. (Fiction. 10-13) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

Waiting for Normal Chapter One Tin box on a tar patch Maybe Mommers and I shouldn't have been surprised; Dwight had told us it was a trailer even before we'd packed our bags. But I had pictured one of those parks--like up on Route 50. I thought trailers were always in trailer parks . I expected a little grass patch out front, daisy-shaped pinwheels stuck into the ground, one of those white shorty fences and a garden gnome. Dwight crossed traffic and pulled the truck up over the curb. When he stopped, Mommers' head bumped against the window. "What are we doing here?" she asked. I watched Dwight's face for the answer. Dwight is my stepfather. Well, he's really my ex-stepfather since he and Mommers split for good. That was two years ago. (It's best to know right from the beginning that my family is hard to follow--like a road that keeps taking twists and turns.) But Dwight had always told me, there'll be no "ex" between you and me, Addie, girl, and I believed him. "I said , what are we doing here?" Mommers repeated. "This is the place," Dwight mumbled. Mommers sat up. She opened her eyes wide and looked out the front windshield. Then she screamed. "Dwight! You've got to be kidding me! This is the city!" Dwight leaned away from her--protecting his ear--and in that quiet way he's got about him, he told Mommers, "Come on, Denise. Let's not go over it again. You know this is all I've got left. You can move in here, or go to Jack's place." He slid out of the truck. Mommers swung her door open so hard it came back at her. She kicked it and it whined on the hinge. "I can't live with Jack!" She was talking about my grandfather on my father's side. I call him Grandio. That's his grandpa name, which my father taught me to say a long time ago. That's about all my father had time to teach me; he died when I was barely three. I've always kind of felt as if my father gave me Grandio--or tried to anyway--that he left him to me so I'd have as much family as possible. Thing is, he kind of left Grandio to Mommers, too. I've never seen two people who wanted less to do with each other. "I hate Jack!" Mommers hollered at Dwight. "And I hate you!" "I know," said Dwight, as if he had accepted that a long time ago. I unfolded myself from the back of the cab, where I'd been squashed in the little jump seat, and slipped down to the ground. Dwight lifted our bags out of the back of his truck and handed Mommers a key. "Go in and have a look. We can work on it some if you want," he said. "And the computer is in for you and Addie." He tried to say all this with a hopeful note in his throat--Dwight always did that. But Mommers threw the key down hard as she could. It hit the ground with a tiny ringing sound like a little chime. "I suppose you want me to overflow with gratitude!" she yelled. "I get a cruddy tin box for a house and a dinosaur for a computer! Lucky me! What about the duplex, Dwight? You could have given me that!" "The duplex is gone to pay for the house, Denise." Dwight kept his lips in a line. Mommers kicked at her own overstuffed suitcase. Then she said all kinds of other things I won't mention, but boy, did I hear some language. Dwight walked away from her. That might have seemed mean to anyone who happened to be watching that day, but I didn't really blame him. He had my little sisters to think of--half sisters, that is. They're Dwight's kids. I'm not. (Like I said, my family is full of twists and turns.) He leaned down and gave me a shaky hug. I squeezed him back and swallowed hard. He whispered into my shoulder. "I'm sorry, Addie, girl." Then he looked at me eye to eye and said, "I'll be around--you know that." I nodded. "And you'll bring Brynna and Katie, right?" "Of course. As often as I can." "Then it'll be all right," I said, and I faked a big old smile. Dwight got back into his truck and raised a hand to wave good-bye. He turned his wheels away from us and with a screech and a lurch, he was outta there. I stood next to Mommers, both of us looking at the trailer. The thing was dingy and faded. But I could tell that it'd once been the color of sunshine. It was plunked down on a few stacks of cinder blocks at the corner of Freeman's Bridge Road and Nott Street in the city of Schenectady--in the state of New York. It was a busy corner-- medium busy, I'd say. The only patch out front was the tarry blacktop bubbling up in the heat of the late summer afternoon. No pinwheels. No garden gnome. "Can you believe this, Addison?" Mommers said. She stared at the trailer door. "That reprobate." " Reprobate ?" I said. "There's one for my vocabulary book." "Yeah, Addie. And for the definition, you just write Dwight !" She fell into a heap and started to cry. I stooped beside Mommers. I gave her shoulder a pat, tried to get her to look at me, but she wouldn't. Then the little flash of silver caught my eye. I reached down and picked up the key. Waiting for Normal . Copyright © by Leslie Connor . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---