Rules

by Cynthia Lord

Scholastic Booktalk

This summer, Catherine’s life will be turned upside down, as she struggles to figure out what “normal” really means.

It’s the first day of summer vacation, and Catherine feels torn apart inside. Her little brother David is autistic, and looking after him seems to dominate her family and her life. David doesn’t understand basic rules of behavior, so Catherine has a list of rules for him in the back of her sketchbook to remind him.

• Chew with your mouth closed.
• Say thank you when someone gives you something, even if you don’t want it.
• If someone says “Hi,” say “Hi” back.
• If the bathroom door is closed, knock.
• Don’t take your pants off.
• No toys in the fish tank.
• No yelling and making a scene in public so that people stare.

The rules help, but Catherine knows that the only times she’ll feel normal this summer are when she’s away from David. For example, perhaps she can make friends with the new girl moving in next door. But once the girl meets David, will she even want to be friends with Catherine? Her best friend Melissa, who’s spending the summer in California with her dad, never minded if David tagged along, but this new girl might.

Going with her mom and David to his occupational therapy appointment is OK. David isn’t an embarrassment there, because everybody there is different. Mrs. Frost’s brother had a stroke and needs speech therapy. Carol has a baby with Down’s syndrome. Jason can’t talk and points to words in the big book on his wheelchair tray to communicate. Catherine doesn’t go anywhere without her sketchbook, and one day she starts to sketch Jason. Later, she offers to make him some new words for his book. And as the weeks go by, Jason becomes Catherine’s new best friend.

The problem is, Catherine’s two lives – her life with the handicapped David and Jason, and her life with her cool friends on the outside, Kristi and Ryan – don’t mix. She has to keep them apart. If Kristi and Ryan find out that she’s friends with a boy in a wheelchair who can’t even talk, what will they think? On the other hand, she can’t live a lie forever. Sooner or later, she’s going to have to find the courage to be herself, no matter what people think.

This Booktalk was written by librarian and booktalking expert Joni R. Bodart

From the publisher's website

Blind Faith

by Ellen Wittlinger

"After Liz Scattergood's grandmother, Bunny, dies, Liz's mother spirals into a deep depression. She barely gets out of bed, let alone does any work in her pottery studio like she used to. Then Liz's mom starts attending a spiritualist church, where she believes she can communicate with Bunny through a medium. Liz thinks it's weird, but she agrees to go along -- maybe it's a way for her and her mother to bond. But for Liz's atheist dad, the spiritualist church has the opposite effect -- it drives him away from her mom and their family.

Without anyone to talk to, Liz turns to her new neighbor, Nathan. He's dealing with his own mother's terminal cancer, and together, Liz and Nathan help each other cope in the wake of loss. In this moving novel, acclaimed author Ellen Wittlinger explores how a loved one's death impacts those who are left behind. "

from the publisher's website

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

by Jordan Sonnenblick

"Thirteen-year-old Steven has a totally normal life: he plays drums in the All-Star Jazz band, has a crush on the hottest girl in the school, and is constantly annoyed by his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey. But when Jeffrey is diagnosed with leukemia, Steven's world is turned upside down. He is forced to deal with his brother's illness and his parents' attempts to keep the family in one piece. Salted with humor and peppered with devastating realities, Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie is a heart warming journey through a year in the life of a family in crisis."

from the publisher's website

The Killer's Tears

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

"In a desolate landscape in Southern Chile, a boy, his parents’ murderer, and a wealthy stranger from the city struggle to confront their pasts and ultimately experience the healing power of love and forgiveness.

'It’s not easy to be alive. . . . It’s complicated, twisted and kinked, just like the dead trees of the Pampas.' (p. 100) No one knows better than Paolo Poloverdo how difficult living can be. After Angel Allegria appears at his family farm and murders his parents, the young boy finds himself in the care of both his parents’ killer and Luis, a wealthy gentleman from the city trying to escape his own inner demons. With two unlikely surrogate fathers, Paolo learns that love, beauty, and ultimately, forgiveness can heal the most griefstricken heart, and that wisdom can be found even in the worst of circumstances. And for Angel and Luis, the love and trust found in the heart of an innocent boy offers them a chance to redeem what is left of the lives they so desperately want to escape."

From the publisher's website

Wolf on the Fold

by Judith Clarke

"Fourteen-year-old Kenny's dad has just died, and now Kenny must become the breadwinner.
'Be careful going through the flatlands,' his mother warns him. 'Don't stop for anyone.' But Kenny does stop, and what happens next will define the man he becomes. These stories, which track the lives of Kenny, his family, and his friends over decades, are about the place where adolescence collides with adulthood. The second story involves Kenny's two daughters, who find they must rely on each other despite their differences. The third story is a snapshot of a school bully with a secret; years later, two of her victims meet her in a shop and are forced to reevaluate their feelings about her."

From the publisher; found on BN.com

Dairy Queen

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

"When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.

Welcome to the summer that D.J. Schwenk of Red Bend, Wisconsin, learns to talk, and ends up having an awful lot of stuff to say. In Dairy Queen, an extraordinary debut novel full of humor, football, and dairy farming, Catherine Gilbert Murdock introduces one of the most likable young adult heroines to come along in quite some time.

Grandpa Schwenk was a dairy farmer, and D.J.'s ex-football coach father was one, too, until he messed up his hip moving the manure spreader. With her dad injured, her mom always at work, and her football star brothers off at college and not speaking to the rest of the family, it falls to D.J. to run the struggling farm as best she can, including the five a.m. milking of all thirty-two cows by hand.

If that wasn't enough to deal with, the Huge Family Fight over Christmas may mean she'll never see her brothers again. Dutiful D.J. takes it all in stride — until she decides to try out for her high school football team, her best friend, Amber, starts acting strange, and she falls in love with the opposing team's quarterback, whom she just happens to be training.

Murdock's care and craft come through in every aspect of this book: the spot-on dialogue that is laugh-out-loud funny and always rings true; the stress and hard work of life on a dairy farm; the tough training, body aches, and anguish of high school football; and perhaps most important, the humor, heartache, and messiness of learning to open up to family and friends. "

From the publisher's website

Sand Dollar Summer

by Kimberly K. Jones

"Twelve-year-old Lise watches her safe world fall apart when her strong, self-reliant mom is injured in a car accident. To recuperate, Mom takes Lise and her bright little brother to live in a rattletrap house on the beach in Maine for the summer. Although her mother grew up there, this is Lise's first experience with the ocean. She's terrified by what may be lurking in the cold depths and confused by the ways that Maine is changing her mother. As secrets from the past start spilling out, even the solid earth may not keep Lise safe anymore. Lise will have to learn to go with the flow -- or risk falling apart -- in this tender, funny, and wise novel...the story of one family's unforgettable summer. "

From the publisher's website