Reaching for Sun

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Reaching for Sun (First Edition) Pub. Date: 3/6/2007 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

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Overview

Josie Wyatt knows what it means to be different. Her family's small farmhouse seems to shrink each time another mansion grows up behind it. She lives with her career-obsessed mom and opinionated Gran, but has never known her father. Then there's her cerebral palsy: even if Josie wants to forget that she was born with a disability, her mom can't seem to let it go. Yet when a strange new boy—Jordan—moves into one of the houses nearby, he seems oblivious to all the things that make Josie different. Before long, Josie finds herself reaching out for something she's never really known: a friend… and possibly more. Interlinked free verse poems tell the beautiful, heartfelt story of a girl, a family farm reduced to a garden, and a year of unforgettable growth.

Editorial Reviews

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up
Josie, a girl with cerebral palsy, lives on the shrinking farmland owned by her family for generations and now being sold to developers. Her mother works and attends college and her grandmother tends her diminished patch of land. The story is told in the seventh-grader's voice in a series of free-verse poems. She is a bright and wry narrator, acutely aware of her limitations and her strengths. When Jordan, wealthy but neglected by his widowed father, moves into a mansion behind her farmhouse, they discover a common love of nature and science, and Josie finally has a real friend. She and her grandmother are both passionate about plants and gardening, and Zimmer does a nice job integrating botanical images throughout the novel. Josie feels like a "dandelion in a purple petunia patch" and thinks, "I must be a real disappointment—/stunted foliage,/no yield." Through growing maturity and Granny's wisdom, she gains confidence in herself. Reaching for Sun will have wide appeal for readers of diverse ability. Reluctant readers will be attracted to the seeming simplicity of the text, with short chapters and lots of white space on the page. They may not even realize that they are reading poetry. More sophisticated readers will find added enjoyment as they begin to appreciate the poetic structure and imagery. Readers of all levels will enjoy spending time with Josie and may gain an increased awareness of what it's like to live with a disability.—Nancy Brown, Fox Lane High School, Bedford, NY

Kirkus Reviews

Josie's cerebral palsy has made her an outsider at school, but at home she is one of three strong women with a rewarding routine. Her mother is working hard to become a landscape designer, leaving Gran to keep the home and garden blossoming. Events unfold in one free-verse poem after another with titles that hint at the narrative but usually work equally well at capturing one distinctive moment in time. Readers gradually learn about Josie and a new-found friend, Jordan, who sees a whole person, not just a disability. Gran becomes ill, Jordan tries out hanging with the in-crowd and Mom has to adjust to new realities. Josie's strength shines as she handles sadness and loss as well as recovery and progress. Readers living with a disability or trying to understand others seem like the target audience, but Josie's voice has a universal appeal. (Fiction. 9-12)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781599900377
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: 3/6/2007
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 144
Sales rank: 535,956
Age range: 8 - 12 Years
Product dimensions: 5.09 (w) x 7.51 (h) x 0.77 (d)

Meet the Author

Tracie Vaughn Zimmer's first teaching assignment was special education. She taught high school students with autism and middle school children with developmental and learning disabilities. She holds a master's degree in reading education and is the author of a book of poetry, Sketches from a Spy Tree (Clarion). She loves living in Waxhaw, North Carolina, with her family but will always consider Ohio her home.

www.tracievaughnzimmer.com

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Anonymous

Posted January 18, 2012

Wonderful.

I love this book, and how it is a bunch of poems in one big story. This author is amazing. Keep them coming, please!!!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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TeensReadToo

Posted November 14, 2008

more from this reviewer

Reviewd by Kylie for TeensReadToo.com

Josie Wyatt is trying to live as normal a life as possible, but there's one thing that's stopping her--her cerebral palsy.

Josie lives in a small farmhouse with her mother and grandma that is surrounded by huge mansions. Josie's mother is always at work and whenever she's at home she's always busy. Her grandmother loves gardening and never keeps any comments to herself. At school, everyone knows that Josie attends special ed, but when a strange new boy, Jordan, moves into the neighborhood, he never thinks of her as different, just normal.

At the end of the school year, Josie and Jordan have become close friends, and all Josie wants to do is spend the whole summer with Jordan--but Jordan has another plan, which is to go to basketball camp. Josie can't imagine a summer without Jordan and she doesn't know how to cope when her grandma has a stoke.

REACHING FOR SUN by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer is a wonderful novel full of free-verse poems that tell the story of a pre-teen girl dealing with the fact that she has cerebral palsy. I definitely recommend this book for any girls who love to read, and I guarantee that you will love it just like I did.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 26, 2009

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