Synopses & Reviews
Josie Wyatt knows what it means to be different. Her family's small farmhouse seems to shrink each time another mansion grows up behind it. She lives with her career-obsessed mom and opinionated Gran, but has never known her father. Then there's her cerebral palsy: even if Josie wants to forget that she was born with a disability, her mom can't seem to let it go. Yet when a strange new boy--Jordan--moves into one of the houses nearby, he seems oblivious to all the things that make Josie different. Before long, Josie finds herself reaching out for something she's never really known: a friend... and possibly more. Interlinked free verse poems tell the beautiful, heartfelt story of a girl, a family farm reduced to a garden, and a year of unforgettable growth.
Review
From BooklistWritten in verse, this quick-reading, appealing story will capture readers' hearts with its winsome heroine and affecting situations. --
Booklist From Kirkus Reviews
*Starred Review* Josie's strength shines as she handles sadness and loss as well as recovery and progress. Readers living with a disability or trying to understand others seem like the target audience, but Josie's voice has a universal appeal. --Kirkus Reviews, starred review
From Horn Book
Garden imagery wends its way through this eloquent free verse novel. ...Zimmer infuses Josie's story with distinctive auxiliary characters. --Horn Book
From The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
An easy-reading drama that may particularly entice reluctant readers. --The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
From School Library Journal
Readers of all levels will enjoy spending time with Josie and may gain an increased awareness of what it's like to live with a disability. --School Library Journal From TeensReadToo.comI definitely recommend this book for any girls who love to read, and I guarantee that you will love it just like I did. I give it 4 stars! --TeensReadToo.com
Review
A
Kirkus Best Children's Book of 2012
A Bank Street College of Education Best Book
* "A beautiful tale of perseverance."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Readers will be enchanted."—VOYA
"[A] lyrical glimpse of early twentieth-century Cuba."—Booklist
"Engles writing is customarily lovely."—Publishers Weekly
"[A] remarkable, intimate depiction of Fefa's struggle with dyslexia; Engle is masterful at using words to evoke this difficulty, and even those readers unfamiliar with the condition will understand its meaning through her rich use of imagery and detail."—Bulletin
"The idea of a wild book on which to let her words sprout is one that should speak to those with reading difficulties and to aspiring poets as well."—School Library Journal
Synopsis
Josie Wyatt, who lives with her mother and grandmother and has cerebral palsy, befriends a boy named Jordan who moves into one of the rich houses behind her old farmhouse.
Synopsis
Newbery Honor-winner Margarita Engle tells her most personal story to date, a glowing portrait in verse of her Cuban grandmother as a young girl struggling with dyslexia.
Synopsis
Fefa struggles with words. She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping and hopping away like bullfrogs. How will she ever understand them? But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. "Think of it as a garden," she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.
About the Author
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer's first teaching assignment was special education. She taught high school students with autism and middle school children with developmental and learning disabilities. She holds a master’s degree in reading education and is the author of a book of poetry, Sketches from a Spy Tree (Clarion). She loves living in Waxhaw, North Carolina, with her family but will always consider Ohio her home. www.tracievaughnzimmer.com