Review by Booklist Review
Leah, 13, is not looking forward to summer. Ever since her brother drowned, she hasn't had much enthusiasm for anything. Her parents are distant in their grieving, and Leah herself has wandered away from her friends, since she feels like no one can understand her. So she's especially surprised when she meets an interesting and outgoing girl named Jasper while she's out wandering the countryside by her home. Jasper is everything Leah currently is not adventurous and willing to take risks and soon the girls enter into a sudden friendship and Jasper helps Leah confront her grief. However, Jasper's life is not as sunny as it seems. She is hiding her own dark secrets she's run away from an abusive home and is living in an abandoned house. Will Leah be able to offer her new friend the same support and protection Jasper offered her or will she betray Jasper's secrets and ruin their friendship? Leah's first-person narrative acutely gets at the varied, sometimes volatile experience of grief, and tweens who like emotionally raw storytelling will likely be hooked.--Lindsey Tomsu Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Leah Davidson, 13, lives in a tight-knit Atlanta neighborhood-"one big family," neighbors call it. But ever since last summer, when her brother Sam drowned, Leah's parents have become ghostlike, and the closeness she once felt with her family and best friends has disappeared. Now, facing a long and lonely summer at home, Leah is immediately intrigued by the red-headed girl she meets while wandering through a nearby farm. Jasper is gregarious, adventurous, and possessing emotional intelligence beyond her age, qualities that help Leah to shed her grief and guilt. But as Leah learns that Jasper has a past she wants to leave behind as well, she grapples with how to protect her friend while keeping her secrets. Snyder tackles heavy topics (death and grief, abuse and homelessness) straightforwardly in this coming-of-age story. Her adept characterization of Jasper, whose hope and sincerity are palpable, offers buoyancy, and the joyful, almost ethereal friendship the two girls form is refreshingly and intensely honest. Snyder maintains a languid, unhurried pace that evokes the lazy days of summer and crescendos in a meaningful, bittersweet ending. A candid story about two teens who find solace and strength in each other. Ages 8-12. Agent: Tina Dubois, ICM Partners. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Instead of having a grand time at camp, Leah's wandering aimlessly this hot Atlanta summer, overwhelmed by complicated grief.Leah, a white Jewish 13-year-old, has been going through the motions of friendship this past year. Ever since her kid brother drowned last summer, she's been drifting through the world like a ghost, with no help from her equally broken parents. With all her friends off enjoying their summer plans, Leah first enjoys the depressive nothingness of a plan-free vacation but is eventually driven out of the house by boredom. And it's then, on an overgrown farm hidden near her wealthy corner of the city, that she first meets Jasper, who's 14. Jasper, an almost magical-seeming white redhead who does her laundry in the creek, evokes fairy tales for Leah. In the overgrown cottage where Jasper lives alone, Leah feels like she's in the Vine Realm, having the kind of adventure "every kid fantasizes about." But Jasper is on the run from a terrible home situation, and while she treasures her friendship with Leah, she still wants Leah to remember that she is homeless: "We aren't playing Narnia or Hogwarts." It takes Leah a long time to understand that the fantastical beauty she sees in Jasper's overgrown encampment is really a desperate reality, but thanks to Snyder's careful symbolism and meticulous tracking of class markers, children will see it before she does.With echoes of Bridge to Terabithia, a nuanced exploration of the tension between enchantment and reality. (Fiction. 10-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
