In a weird bit of scheduling, we got out for Winter Break on Wednesday, December 20 and went back yesterday, Thursday, January 4. Consequently, there were only 2 book talks this week.
I chose Thursday’s book, Wishing Day by Lauren Myracle, because it reminded me of making New Year’s Resolutions.
Friday, I chose Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani just because I like it.
Yes, a second book about wishes with a blue cover!
Wishing Day, by Lauren Myracle, is different from The Seventh Wish because the process of wishing isn’t a secret.
Publisher’s Summary:On the third night of the third month after a girl’s thirteenth birthday, every girl in the town of Willow Hill makes three wishes.
The first wish is an impossible wish.
The second is a wish she can make come true herself.
And the third is the deepest wish of her secret heart.
Natasha is the oldest child in a family steeped in magic, though she’s not sure she believes in it. She’s full to bursting with wishes, however. She misses her mother, who disappeared nearly eight long years ago. She has a crush on one of the cutest boys in her class, and she thinks maybe it would be nice if her very first kiss came from him. And amid the chaos of a house full of sisters, aunts, and a father lost in grief, she aches to simply be . . . noticed.
So Natasha goes to the willow tree at the top of the hill on her Wishing Day, and she makes three wishes. What unfolds is beyond anything she could have imagined.
This is the first in a trilogy and I suspect the each of the next two books are about each of Natasha’s younger sisters. Although Myracle captures the uncertainty and anxiety that comes with being a teenager, I found the book a little slow in places and hard to get into. I wonder, if I’d brought this one to jury duty, if I’d be saying the same thing. I certainly would have read it in one sitting. But, reading it at home, I have found myself putting it down frequently to do other things. It might have to do with Natasha’s character. I wonder if the next book, centered, presumably, on more flamboyant Darya, might hold my attention better.
I am sometimes surprised, and often excited when an author I thought of as one thing, writes outside my idea of them. In my mind, Lauren Myracle is a YA author, mostly because the first book of hers that I read, Shine, was targeted at that age group. She is often edgy and frequently controversial. According to the American Library Association, Myracle’s books were the most challenged books of 2009 and 2011. Her books continue to be challenged in school libraries, usually for scenes of alleged sexuality, homosexuality, or alcohol use.
Just to keep us on our toes, she has now entered the world of easy chapter books. The Life of Ty:Penguin Problems returns to characters from The Winnie Years Series, focusing on Winnie’s younger brother, Ty.
Ty is s sensitive seven-year old. he has two older sisters and one baby sister. He’s stuck in the middle and feeling a little forlorn. Although the plot is more or less what you’d expect of a chapter book for this age group, what I like is how Myracle turns stereotypes upside down.
Ty is s sensitive male character. The rowdy and naughtiest lid in class is a girl. Nothing really earth-shaking, but planting seeds for kids to see the world beyond how it is so often portrayed. This book will be a less controversial than other Myracle has written and I think a lot of young readers will really enjoy this new series.
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