stories about mixed-up families
Hope Was Here
by Joan Bauer
Hope lives with her aunt Addie, a diner cook extraordinaire. Together, they rescue
old diners and bring down-home comfort to folks across the country with Addie's amazing cooking
and Hope's warm service. However, sixteen-year-old Hope is tired of the traveling and her long, fruitless
search for her father. It's tough to serve customers all day when she'd like
a little more homey comfort in her own life. Many unexpected treats are on the menu when Hope and
Addie land at the Welcome Stairways diner in Wisconsin, and readers are in for a treat both sweet
and nourishing in Hope Was Here. The novel sparkles with the fast-paced, dazzling rhythm of a diner moving
during a busy rush... everything balancing on timing, teamwork, humor, and compassion for others. Bauer
has it all here. Yum!
Nobody's Family is Going to Change
by Louise Fitzhugh
Emma and Willie both have dreams. Willie wants to be a dancer, and Emma is determined
to become a lawyer. Their parents, however, mock them and refuse to take these dreams
seriously. What can they do? Are their parents just brain-dead? ...or is there something
wrong with their dreams?
Gypsy Davey
by Chris Lynch
How come, if Davey is as slow-witted as his mixed-up family thinks he is, he's
the only one in touch with his heart? He also is the only one who understands
the power of family bonds, caring, and love. Davey's mother is beautiful but
confused. His father is lost, rootless, absent. Davey's care falls on his
sister's young shoulders, but she has problems and unfulfilled needs, too.
In this atmosphere of extreme neglect, we watch Davey grow up and adapt to
the world. We hear is slow-moving thoughts. We feel the yearnings in his
heart. We celebrate the freedom and peace he discovers when he finally learns
how to escape the confines of his sad, dysfunctional family. What a complicated
character... What a moving (and disturbing) story... This author's range astounds me. Gypsy Davey's darkness, its loneliness, is so different from the charming, smart-alec
voice found in Slot Machine.
Make Lemonade
by Virginia Euwer Wolff
When 14-year-old LaVaughn answered the ad ("Babysitter Needed Bad"), she had no idea how tangled her life would become with 17-year-old Jolly,
her two kids ("leaking fluids everywhere"), and the roach-infested apartment where they lived. In this fine novel, Virginia Euwer Wolff
tells a story about two girls who learn to make lemonade out of the lemons life gives them. The grit, smells, and pain waft off the
page and into our hearts, but slowly something else begins to stir there, too... growing love, patience, and even fragile hope for the future.
Wolff's poetic style makes this a fast read; however, the emotions and courage she explores are very complex. LaVaughn will
linger long in readers' hearts.
Heaven
by Angela Johnson
Marley's on the verge of learning a new truth about herself
and her family, but what if that truth turns Momma and Pops
into liars? And who will Marley be if everything she's ever
believed in turns out to be untrue? This little slip of a novel, without a single
wasted word, packs a powerful wallop, and it won the 1998 Coretta Scott King award.
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!
by M. E. Kerr
In order to get attention, a fat girl announces in Day-Glo
graffiti that she shoots smack, but her do-good mother is
too busy rehabilitating addicts to notice. M. E. Kerr has been
turning out great novels for decades. This one, though over 25
years old, is still sharp enough to scratch underneath your skin and
remind you of how much you hated yourself. There are no simple twists
here, and Kerr avoids moralizing about drugs or weight or anything.
Send Me Down a Miracle
by Han Nolan
Fourteen-year-old Charity has always been the perfect preacher's daughter.
However, the whole town will be in for a shock when she finally stands up
against her domineering father. This novel brilliantly captures the moment
when we first realize that sometimes... just sometimes... our parents can be wrong.
