Product Details
Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, July 2008
Hardcover, 208 pages
ISBN-10: 1416939288
ISBN-13: 9781416939283
Ages: 8 - 12
Grades: 3 - 7
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1Description
Because Yumi RuÍz-Hirsch has grandparents from Japan, Cuba, and Brooklyn, her mother calls her a poster child for the twenty-first century. Yumi would laugh if only her life wasn't getting as complicated as her heritage. All of a sudden she's starting eighth grade with a girl who collects tinfoil and a boy who dresses like a squid. Her mom's found a new boyfriend, and her punk-rock father still can't sell a song. She's losing her house; she's losing her school orchestra. And worst of all she's losing her grandfather Saul.
Yumi wishes everything couldstay the same. But as she listens to Saul tell his story, she learns that nobody ever asks you if you're ready for life to happen. It just happens. The choice is either to sit and watch or to join the dance.
National Book Award finalist Cristina García's first middle-grade novel celebrates the chaotic, crazy, and completely amazing patchwork that makes up our lives.
How did you come to write this book?
I wrote it to make sense of the sudden death of my daughter's beloved grandfather. She wasn't aware of his life, and it was a way of reclaiming and immortalizing him for her. The main character is based on her, and the book is dedicated to the two of them; it was a way to make him live again on the page during her sadness.
Cristina Garcia's Books
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The Dog Who Loved the MoonFrom National Book Award-finalist Cristina Garcia comes a lyrical picture book about a young girl, a dog, and one magical nightRead More -
The Lady Matador's HotelFrom National Book Award finalist Cristina Garcia, a dazzling novel about the intertwining lives of the denizens of a hotelRead More
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