Baskin, Nora Raleigh The
Summer Before Boys
Simon &
Schuster/Little Brown 2011 196p. 15.99 978-1-442-417-922
ms/jr Conflict E-BN
A
young girl comes of age the summer that her mother is deployed
to Iraq, and she must go and live with her older sister’s family. This is an excellent coming-of-age story that addresses the experiences of children whose
parents leave to fight wars in foreign countries. Julia is a 12-year-old who goes to live with
her much-older sister, brother-in-law and niece during the
summer of 2004.
Character development, parent-child relationships,
friendship, betrayal, and
burgeoning sexuality are all skillfully handled in this
wonderful realistic
novel. Middle-school-age
girls will identify with Julia, especially those who
are close to someone who is away at war.
There are a number of typos in the uncorrected proof ...
mainly omissions of
words. Kennedy,
Carol
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