June has been content living with her mother on the shores of Lake Champlain, spending her time baking and selling sweets at the Stillwater Marina, and swimming with her friend Luke. This summer she is dreaming of what pie she is going to enter in the Champlain Valley Fair. It seems pretty ideal, yes?
It is pretty ideal except for Eva. Eva has just moved in with June and her mom. It's not like June didn't know that her mom was gay, but having Eva living with them is making June uncomfortable. After all, June and MJ have always had a rhythm, and Eva just doesn't fit. Now that Vermont's civil union law has passed, Eva and MJ are even talking about getting married!
But not everyone in their town is happy with the idea of civil unions. In fact, someone even had the nerve to put a "Take Back Vermont" sign on their front lawn. June isn't even sure what that means, but she doesn't stick around to find out. After Eva tears up the sign, June takes off with Luke to see the secret blueberry bushes that he found up by the jumping cliff. June can't wait to come back the next week to pick some for her pies. Before she and Luke leave, however, June's friend Tina's brother Sam and some of his friends show up. Sam calls June a "lezzie" for being too scared to jump off the cliff, and June starts to wonder if Sam put up the sign on her lawn. And does Tina feel the same way her brother does?
Soon the "Take Back Vermont" campaign starts to take off in town. Folks stop coming into the marina, and June starts to worry about her mom. But there are others who are willing to stick up for June, Eva and MJ, and June starts to realize that she needs to stick up for her family as well.
Overall this is a coming of age story that easily could have turned into a didactic piece about marriage equity. Gennari has managed to balance the discussion with June's struggles with friendships, her blossoming crush on Luke as well as the everyday growing pains that families go through. I am always on the look out for LGBT books to put in our collection, and honestly ones that fit the tween audience are hard to come by.
My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer fits nicely into not only the LGBT collection, but into tween summer reads as well.
5 Minutes for Books is holding a Fall Festival of Children’s Books this week and we are joining in the celebration by listing our favorite picture book this month. We live in the Midwest and both my kindergartener and toddler enjoyed reading this beautifully illustrated ABC picture book by Arthur Geisert.
Country Road ABC: An Illustrated Journey Through America's Farmland
by Arthur Geisert; Houghton Mifflin (May 2010); ISBN 9780547194691; 64 pages; Copy from our local library
This isn't your ordinary farm book. It also isn't your average ABC book. It is so much more. County Road ABC captures a way of life - the life of farmers living in a small farming community, or more specifically, the life along Iowa County Road Y31. Like in his other books, Geisert creates the illustrations using a copper-plate etching process combined with watercolors and acrylics and the resulting pictures are extraordinarily detailed. Starting with A is for ammonia fertilizer and ending with Z is for z-brace, the letters of the alphabet help describe various aspects of country life. The text is rather sparse, but the illustrations ... Wow! They are amazing.
I've lived most of my life in and near small farming communities. The landscapes portrayed in the book, particularly the panorama picture that continues on the bottom edge page after page, accurately represent many of the country roads that I've traveled on. The book even depicts the seasons starting with the spring thaw and circling through summer, fall and the snowy, cold winter. The reader really does get a sense of what it is like living in a rural area. There's farm animals, a country church and graveyard, an abandoned one-room schoolhouse, a village parade, tractors in the fields, and even images of the volunteer fire department - this is the small town, rural Midwest captured in a book. My son's favorite part of the book is the page with the line of cars following a combine. That's not surprising, given the number of combines we've noted in the fields lately. My daughter commented on the page with the one room school and wanted to know more about the outhouses, one with the sun/star and the other with the moon. We had to look up more about outhouses online after reading the book.
Even though my kids do not live on a farm, they live near farmers and farming communities. I want them to understand the country life because it is in their blood. Their grandparents and great-grandparents grew up on farms. We still visit my grandparents' farm and drive on many country roads to get there. It's a way of life worth understanding and we enjoyed reading about it and experiencing it through the pictures in this book, and learning our ABCs along the way.
That sounds like a beautiful book! Thanks for sharing.
~Jen Unsell
www.theunsells.blogspot.com
So many wonderful ABC books are out there these days. This one sounds like another gem, and a great way to teach your kids about the farming life.
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This sounds like a fantastic ABC book - I'll have to check it out sometime!
I live in a farming community and this book looks a step above your usual ABC book about farms. I can't wait to read it, thanks.
This book sounds FASCINATING! Ammonia fertilizer?! Kiddo would devour this book simply to learn about odd things like that (we're not farming people in any sense of the word). I must go find a copy ...
I love the sound of the illustrations - ones which can be poured over and from which stories can spiral out. Lovely.
That is a beautiful book! I am not an art-lover in general, but there are some picture books that just make me swoon.
Thanks for linking it up. Be sure to leave a comment on the main post at the Fall Festival of CB as your entry (the links aren't counted, so you have to leave a comment saying "I linked a review" or something).
i collect abc books.. i am adding this to my list... thanks