Tugs at Your Heartstrings

Sometimes a story makes you want to jump into the book and help the character. Leslie Connor's Waiting for Normal is one such book.  Addie is an incredibly resilient and self sufficient girl who has no idea how amazing she is.  Her life is one hardship after another, yet somehow she keeps improving herself. 

Instead of being mad she only gets toast for dinner she has created a whole range of toast dinners with different toppings.  Instead of just accepting she doesn't have, "the love of learning," she keeps a vocabulary notebook to always learn new words.  Small spoiler-she does have a love of learning she just doesn't know it yet.  

After Addie's mother (who she calls mommers-side note: after reading this book I want to start calling my mom that) divorces her stepfather, Addie and her mom are forced to relocate into a trailer.  Addie loves small things and immediately falls in love with the trailer.  She also falls in love with her corner and all the unusual characters that live there.  I'm pretty sure you will fall in love with all of those things too-I know I did.  

I would love to hear a student's perspective on this book,  As an adult this book tore at my heartstrings.  All I wanted to do was help Addie.  I wonder if a student would pick up on all of those little hints that things are not well in Addie's world. SPOILER ALERT: things turn out ok-I just had to say that because I was so stressed and concerned while reading the book I couldn't enjoy it.  Knowing that things turn out ok-not saying how-will, I hope, make this book more enjoyable to read.  

Being resilient...that's kids stuff.