First Line Friday No. 29

It's finally warm!  I live in a place that's usually 300% humidity and 1,000 degrees (Ok...I exaggerate a wee bit.  But it seriously feels like an oven from April-October).

However, it has been cold here for about four months -- the longest period of 30 degree weather in a long history of long, shimmering summers.  So I've been looking forward to seeing the sun and feeling it warm my skin.

It got me thinking about summer reading.  Why is it that we read certain books in the summertime?  Sometimes we read 'lighter' material, and sometimes we read 'fun' books, and then there's those unique books that just feel like a summer afternoon.

Sharon Creech's books should be read at every season, but they're particularly poignant in the summer.  I especially love Absolutely Normal Chaos, Walk Two Moons and Chasing Redbird in the summertime, but my very favorite Creech book is Bloomability.

I adore this book because the main character and I both attended an international school.  I understand her confusion in, and then love of, being overseas in a mix of people from all over the globe.  She gets taken from a hick town in America to cultured, beautiful Switzerland, and between the two places she finally starts figuring out who she is.

It's a beautiful story.

Here's the first few words:

In my first life, I lived with my mother, and my older brother and sister, Crick and Stella, and with my father when he wasn't on the road.  My father was a trucker, or sometimes a mechanic or a picker, plucker or painter.  He called himself a Jack-of-all-trades (Jack was his real name), but sometimes there wasn't any trade in whatever town we were living in, so off he would go in search of a job somewhere else.  My mother would start packing, and we'd wait for a phone call from him that would tell us it was time to join him.  

He'd always say, "I found us a great place!  Wait'll you see it!"

Each time we moved, we had fewer boxes, not more.  My mother would say, "Do you really need all those things, Dinnie? They're just things.  leave them."

--from Bloomability by Sharon Creech

Reasons to keep reading:

1. In her 'first' life?  What happens in her second life?
2. Crick?  What other crazy names does this family have?
3. Why does Dinnie's dad move them around all the time?
4. How does Dinnie feel about letting things go?
5. What things has Dinnie kept?

Have you ever read Sharon Creech's books?  Did you like them?  I find the way she weaves words together unique.  I could sit for hours and listen to someone read her beautiful, beautiful words.

The Great Unexpected by Sharon Creech

Last week I wrote a post about the books I was dying to read -- including this new book from one of my favorite authors.

I was on the waiting list at the library and to my surprise, it was my turn to pick it up yesterday.

Sharon Creech's books always seem to arrive when I need them most.

The Great Unexpected is a brilliant and beautiful story about the connections we share without even knowing.  The connections that, sometimes, lead to a great, unexpected thing.

It's hopeful, open, curious, and funny.

It's full of light.

And yet, there are sad things in the book.  Things that are true to life, unexpected, and tragic.  There are things in it that I've struggled with, and things that left me wondering, how will they go on?

I feel as if The Great Unexpected is telling me,

Bad things happen.  There will always be bad things and I'm sorry, but they do happen.  But oh, the good things that can happen!  There are beautiful things yet to be.

This book buoys me up in a ring of hope.  This story, full of sadness and wonder and light, comforts me and tells me that unexpected things can be great.

If you enjoy stories with real heroines, surprises, emotional depth, and joyous endings, I hope you'll give this one a chance.

I'm waiting on my own Great Unexpected.  Are you?