The Summer Before Boys

For Ages: 9 - 12

2awards
customer reviews

Julia and Eliza are best friends, spending the summer together. Julia's mother is serving in the National Guard and Julia spends all of her time trying not to think about what could happen. So the girls lose themselves in their summer, hanging out at the resort where Eliza's father works. But when they meet a new boy, neither one of them is prepared for what it does to their friendship.

Nora Raleigh Baskin delivers a poignant look at the way a first crush can come between best friends and the importance of hanging on to the time you have as a kid before rushing into growing up.

Choose a format:

Buy from us:

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers |
208 pages |
ISBN 9781416986737 |
May 2011 |
Grades 4 - 7

$16.99 List Price

This title is temporarily out of stock, please check back soon.

Buy from another retailer:

see more

Praise

“

”

“A vivid and moving story about traveling the road between childhood and what comes next. I loved it.”

– Rebecca Stead, Newbery Medal-winning author of WHEN YOU REACH ME

“Perfectly captures the way a girl’s life can be suspended between the last days of childhood and the glimmerings of her first crush. The Summer Before Boys is a novel of great depth and tenderness.”

– Frances O’Roark Dowell, award-winning author of THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF GIRLS

“An extraordinary novel explores the challenges faced by children whose parents have gone off to war. . . . Baskin adeptly portrays Julia’s ambivalence and anxiety in this thoughtful tale that artfully brings the war to the... ”

“Baskin perfectly captures friendship among girls on the edge of puberty, especially the way big dramas work out in small moments. . . . A poignant story of children on the homefront and the ways that a first love can break up... ”

– Booklist, March 1, 2011

“Baskin covers this emotional territory with respect and honesty, allowing readers to see themselves in these complicated, yet likable, girls.”

– The Horn Book Magazine

“It is a rare story for kids of this age that treats such matters with straight-forwardness and without mushy and ridiculously high hormonal responses. This is not Twilight; it's a gentle story about two long-time friends and how... ”

– - Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

‹ ›

Read an Excerpt

one

My Aunt Louisa, who is really my sister, snored like a machine with a broken part, a broken part that kept cycling around in a shuddering, sputtering rhythm.

“Whistle with me,” Eliza said into the dark.

“What?”

We lay together in bed, in Eliza’s room that was really not a room, but a part of the den that had been sectioned off with a thin portable wall. Each night either Aunt Louisa, or Uncle Bruce, who is really my brother-in-law, pulled out “the wall,” like stretching an accordion as far as it would go. Then Eliza would yank her bed...