Swing Sideways

by Nanci Turner Steveson

Overview

Perfect for fans of Bridge to Terabithia and Walk Two Moons, this debut middle grade novel is the story of two girls and the unforgettable summer in which they learn about true friendship and loss.                                              

Annie has been promised a summer of freedom in the country. Freedom from a difficult school year, freedom from her fake “friends” back in the city, and, most of all, freedom from her mom’s life-governing spreadsheets and rigid schedules.

When Annie meets California, who is visiting her grandfather’s farm, it seems she has found the perfect partner for the summer she’s always craved. Especially when California offers Annie a real-life adventure: if she and Annie can find the ponies her mom rode as a girl, surely it will remind her mom how wonderful the farm is—and fix what’s broken between her mom and her grandfather.

But Annie’s summer of freedom is sprinkled with secrets, and everything she has learned about bravery and love will be put to the test when the truth behind the ultimate secret changes her life forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062374561
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Lexile:	700L (what's this?)
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Nanci Turner Steveson grew up in Connecticut, England, and Texas, always with a book in one hand, the reins of a pony in the other. She wrote her first “novel” at the age of nine about a wild horse named Liberty. Nanci works with the Off Square Theatre Company as a stage manager and youth-performer shepherd. She is a reading fairy to book-hungry children and a riding instructor. The mother of two grown sons, Nanci lives in a meadow at the foot of the Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with her Arabian horse and a 100-pound rescue dog named Story. She is the founder of the Literacy for Hope project, dedicated to getting books into the hands of the homeless. Visit her online at www.nanciturnersteveson.com.

Editorial Reviews

This is a summer neither Annabel nor readers will ever forget.” — School Library Journal

“This powerful tale of friendship and hope, made especially poignant by each girl’s struggle to repair family relationships, will capture hearts. Add an injured dog...woods made for adventures, and heartbreak that never becomes mawkish, and you have a story about so much more than summer fun.” — Booklist

“This will please country girls at heart, those needing to be brave, and those wanting a good summer story of friendship and growth.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

From the Publisher

This will please country girls at heart, those needing to be brave, and those wanting a good summer story of friendship and growth.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

This powerful tale of friendship and hope, made especially poignant by each girl’s struggle to repair family relationships, will capture hearts. Add an injured dog...woods made for adventures, and heartbreak that never becomes mawkish, and you have a story about so much more than summer fun.

Booklist

This will please country girls at heart, those needing to be brave, and those wanting a good summer story of friendship and growth.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

This powerful tale of friendship and hope, made especially poignant by each girl’s struggle to repair family relationships, will capture hearts. Add an injured dog...woods made for adventures, and heartbreak that never becomes mawkish, and you have a story about so much more than summer fun.

Booklist

2016-02-17
An anxious girl makes a mysterious summer friendship in this middle-grade debut. After a school year of panic attacks and increasing anxiety, Annabel has been promised a summer free from her professor parents' overscheduling and demands. They stay as usual in their upstate New York cottage, but instead of spending her days at tennis camp and sailing camp, Annabel (now calling herself Annie) secretly befriends the visiting granddaughter of their reclusive farmer neighbor. Both girls are white. California (her grandfather calls her Catherine) explains that she's staying for the summer to see her grandfather through a cancer drug trial. California's mother and grandfather have long been estranged. California believes that the ponies her mother showed as a child are still alive, on the farm, and that if she can find them, her mother will come back and be reconciled. It's an odd conceit—there's no real explanation why California's grandfather wouldn't be up-front about the ponies. By the end of the summer it's clear that California, not her grandfather, is the one who's sick. Annie has put her anxiety aside in order to be a more outgoing friend. Unfortunately, the novel trades more in melodrama than believable relationships. Annie's mother, California's mother, and her grandfather all seem to act and react in order to further a plot rather than authentically, and Annie's own personality is a sum of unsubstantiated fears. Too much telling, not enough truth. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews