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

05/09/2016
Steveson debuts with a empathic summer-of-change story in which panic-attack-prone Annabel transforms from a skinny, anxiety-ridden bookworm into a healthier, stronger, and braver girl. She and her parents are spending the summer at their lake house, as usual, but Annabel's therapist has insisted that she have an unstructured schedule with plenty of independence, instead of living by her controlling mother's spreadsheets. Befriended by the local hermit's free-spirited granddaughter, California—who explains that she is visiting to help her grandfather recover from his chemotherapy treatments—Annabel renames herself Annie and throws herself into "the Freedom Plan" with a vengeance. Before long, however, she is in over her head, involved in California's questionable adventures, lying to her parents, and sneaking out at night (to tend to a sick, abandoned dog). Steveson sets up a promising portrayal of intriguing dynamics in both families, but Anna's transformation happens so rapidly as to not be entirely believable, and late-arriving revelations make the ending seem of a different spirit than the rest of the book. Ages 8–12. Agent: Al Zuckerman, Writers House. (May)

Publishers Weekly

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

02/01/2016
Gr 4–6—Complicated family problems become more manageable when shared between friends. Every word, every gesture, every disagreement registers on the internal Richter scale as two friends negotiate the highs and lows of true friendship. Annabel and California forge a deep bond. Annabel, the tween from the city, and California, who arrives from a rural environment, find each other at the perfect time. Plenty of problems accompany each girl—illness, panic attacks, a hovering mother, an estranged family, and more—but all of these conditions pale beside their love for each other. They idle away the hours during a long summer on an idyllic farm complete with fields of corn, trees to climb, lakes for swimming, and endless time to talk, plan, and try to resolve issues. California is sure her mother and grandfather can become reconciled if only she can find the two missing ponies her mother once rode. Annabel, meanwhile, struggles to overcome her panic attacks and learn to eat normally again—if only she can maintain distance and independence from her helicopter mother. Together, the girls uncover dark family secrets and learn to be brave under pressure. This is a summer neither Annabel nor readers will ever forget. VERDICT A strong addition to most middle grade collections; recommend to those who enjoy a good cry.—Lillian Hecker, Town of Pelham Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

Narrator Tara Sands realistically interprets a well-off teen’s wry observations of her dysfunctional family and their friends. Finally released from the watchfulness of her well-meaning but overbearing mother, Annie reinvents herself during her family's annual lake house vacation. Gaunt and bony, she finds an unlikely friend named California, a robust and sturdy country girl so unlike Annie's mother and the rest of the wealthy vacationers, who are voiced with appropriate snobbery and disdain. Sands’s portrayal of California begins cheerily confident. Later, the voices of both girls change, becoming soft and quavery, sometimes angry, as they face hard truths about themselves, their families, and each other. L.T. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

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