Books for Mary

Mary is a delightful ninth grader in South Carolina, youngest of four, who is not interested in vampire books and does not want anything too adult, figuring she has the rest of her life for that.  I have been meaning to suggest some books she would like for more than a year.  Here you go, Mary; once you try some of these (they should be available at your library), let me know and I will have a better sense of what you like. . .

Naturally, one always starts with Middle C, I mean, Heaven to Betsy – and as Mary is a freshman, she will enjoy Betsy’s first two years of high school.   I plan to give her the new Harper edition which also contains Betsy in Spite of Herself.  I wonder if there are any tall, dark strangers in her class?

Winter Shadows (Book Review)

Title: Winter Shadows

Author: Margaret Buffie

Publication Information: Tundra Press Hardcover, 2010

Genre: Children’s Fiction / Timeslip

Plot: Two young women in Western Canada, one in 1856 and one in the present, separated by five generations, communicate through an old diary and a cherished brooch.  Beatrice, a lovely and, unusually, educated young woman in a rural Canadian town, has returned from school to find that her father has married a dreadful woman, Ivy, who not only resents her stepdaughter but is prejudiced against her husband’s Cree ancestry (this would make more sense if it were the ancestry of the first wife – Ivy shows her distaste of her mother-in-law’s and stepdaughter’s heritage but apparently overcame her feelings with regard to her husband; I suppose because she was desperate to remarry).  Ivy’s seemingly uncouth adult son has settled nearby but Beatrice prefers the company of the new and more refined minister, Reverend Dalhousie.