3 more books to tell you about before I begin concentrating on the 2012 Rebecca Caudill nominees. First is an historical fiction by Caroline B. Cooney, one of my favorite authors. The Ransom of Mercy Carter tells the story of a young girl captured by Canadian Indians during the French and Indian War. Mercy sees her village destroyed and many of her friends and neighbors killed. Then she, her brothers, and most of the children of her village are marched hundreds of miles to Indian villages where they are adopted by Indian families. Mercy shows great courage and curiosity as she adapts to Indian life. When ransom finally comes she must decide if she wants to return to her English home or stay in her Indian home.
Rose
mary Wells's Red Moon at Sharpsburg features another courageous girl India who lives in Virginia during the Civil War. Not only does India believe in the cause of the Confederacy, but she is fascinated by the chemistry and biology she learns from a neighbor, Emory Trimble. Repeatedly told that girls do not study the sciences, India holds on to her dream to go to college when the war is over. What India sees of the war and the medicine of the time is quite sickening, but the ending gives hope for a brighter future.
I end the summer with a science fiction book - Across the Universe, by Beth Re
vis - that takes the reader on a three-hundred year space journey to a new life on a new planet. In alternating chapters we learn the story of Amy, a girl from our time who is frozen along with her parents for the space journey, and Elder, a boy who has grown up on the ship as part of the multi-generation crew. Together these two teenagers solve the mystery of what has been happening on the ship and why the journey is taking much longer than expected -- so long that a totally different society has evolved aboard the ship.
Thank you to those who have shared your summer reading with me. I look forward to hearing from more of you as we meet in the new school year.
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