Maddy Lederman's Blog - Posts Tagged "tween"
EDNA IN THE DESERT is Schools' 2015 Summer Reading!
EDNA IN THE DESERT is Required Summer Reading for 8th and 9th graders for the second year!
Author Maddy Lederman will visit Carle Place High School again in Fall 2015.
http://www.maddylederman.com/edna-in-...
http://www.maddylederman.com/a-great-...
Author Maddy Lederman will visit Carle Place High School again in Fall 2015.
http://www.maddylederman.com/edna-in-...
http://www.maddylederman.com/a-great-...
Published on June 27, 2015 05:18
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Tags:
addiction, book, coming-of-age, desert, family, first-love, grandparents, iphonesia, journey, librarian, literature, love, mg, middle-grade, novel, puberty, reading, school, sex, sexuality, spirituality, technology, teen, tween, unplug, ya, young-adult
"…I’m no different from Edna."
Dear Readers,
Please check out this insightful review of EDNA IN THE DESERT from Tween Book Blog!
"We learn to recognize Edna’s self-absorbed behavior as our own and it makes us think about what we could change to get us to be more in touch with the important people in our lives. Edna and the reader are forced to consider the consequences of our actions, to learn how to love much more fully and live a life that is richer. It’s a coming of age story that asks the reader hard questions without forcing an immediate answer. While the ending is somewhat bittersweet, we, like Edna, will have made a more positive change that we will be able to carry with us into the real world."
https://tweenbookblog.wordpress.com/2...
Edna in the Desert
Please check out this insightful review of EDNA IN THE DESERT from Tween Book Blog!
"We learn to recognize Edna’s self-absorbed behavior as our own and it makes us think about what we could change to get us to be more in touch with the important people in our lives. Edna and the reader are forced to consider the consequences of our actions, to learn how to love much more fully and live a life that is richer. It’s a coming of age story that asks the reader hard questions without forcing an immediate answer. While the ending is somewhat bittersweet, we, like Edna, will have made a more positive change that we will be able to carry with us into the real world."
https://tweenbookblog.wordpress.com/2...
Edna in the Desert
Published on July 09, 2015 09:02
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Tags:
addiction, book, coming-of-age, desert, family, first-love, grandparents, iphonesia, journey, librarian, literature, love, mg, middle-grade, novel, puberty, reading, school, sex, sexuality, spirituality, technology, teen, tween, unplug, ya, young-adult
Edna Goes Back To School
Can a Beverly Hills teen survive without a cell phone, Internet or TV? …Edna will find out.
Edna in the Desert
Edna In The Desert author Maddy Lederman visited Carle Place High School where students read the novel over the summer. They talked about Edna and Johnny, social media and the desert, and then participated in a writing workshop emphasizing the use of setting in story-telling.
The students asked smart questions and came up with fascinating settings in the workshop: An underground cave that has a pond filled with bio-luminescent fish, a scrumptious Candyland, an old house with creaky floors and an abandoned insane asylum, just to name a few!
Afterwards, Maddy signed books for students while they enjoyed Pineapple Upsidedown Cake, a treat from the book.
http://www.maddylederman.com/edna-goe...
Edna in the Desert
Edna In The Desert author Maddy Lederman visited Carle Place High School where students read the novel over the summer. They talked about Edna and Johnny, social media and the desert, and then participated in a writing workshop emphasizing the use of setting in story-telling.
The students asked smart questions and came up with fascinating settings in the workshop: An underground cave that has a pond filled with bio-luminescent fish, a scrumptious Candyland, an old house with creaky floors and an abandoned insane asylum, just to name a few!
Afterwards, Maddy signed books for students while they enjoyed Pineapple Upsidedown Cake, a treat from the book.
http://www.maddylederman.com/edna-goe...
Published on October 02, 2015 02:43
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Tags:
addiction, beverly-hills, family, female-protagonist, grandparents, hollywood, love, mg, middlegrade, ptsd, rich-kids, romance, spiritual, technology, teen, tween, veteran, vietnam, war, ya, young-adult
EDNA & EMPATHY
EDNA IN THE DESERT was thoughtfully reviewed by "Our Digital Daughters" on January 25, 2016:
Today’s review is of YA Novel Edna in the Desert by Maddy Lederman.
Edna in the Desert
Drive-in movie theatres are romantic, iconic and offer a screen like no other. In Edna in the Desert, by Maddy Lederman, the drive-in sets a sweet scene and a dramatic contrast for 13-year-old troublemaking, narcissistic and cellphone-addicted Edna:
“Edna’s stay in the desert had established the longest time she’d gone in her life without looking at a screen. This one was framed by the windshield from inside the jeep and suspended in front of the stars.”
Yes, this is a coming of age YA novel about young love and first kisses, but more poignantly, Edna in the Desert tells a timely story of the importance of empathy in the age of cellphones and social media. It looks at our screen-obsessed kids and what is at risk when meaningful human contact and face-to-face interaction becomes secondary to a smart device that becomes their third limb, mirror and hiding place.
When we first meet Edna, her harried parents are driving her away from her posh life in Los Angeles to her grandparents’ remote cabin in the desert. Banished to live in Dream Valley for the summer, “where the best thing to do is daydream,” Edna has no Internet connection and no semblance of her accustomed cushy lifestyle. Edna is faced with long empty days where she must cope with a list of chores spelled out by her reticent and stern grandmother and her only entertainment are books about pioneer women of the Old West.
“In the real world, a million things would have happened in Edna’s day by nine. Many of them would have been texts.”
But then in a truly cliché but well-painted scene, Edna is saved by “the best-looking boy she’d ever seen.” According to Our Digital Daughter Ambassador Maia, “She complains a whole lot and it is very annoying to listen to, until luckily she meets a hot guy named Johnny who saves her when she walks into the desert to try to run away. Johnny is seventeen and the age gap turned me off a bit. But I did like the relationship between Edna and her grandma.”
The book turns, as do the pages, as you happily experience Edna’s life away from Twitter and Facebook where there are such things as unstructured time, a desert oasis and a drive-in. You root for her as her narcissism fades and you realize that only through learning empathy will she herself be worthy of love.
Originally published by "Our Digital Daughters," http://ourdigitaldaughters.com/2016/0...
Today’s review is of YA Novel Edna in the Desert by Maddy Lederman.

Edna in the Desert
Drive-in movie theatres are romantic, iconic and offer a screen like no other. In Edna in the Desert, by Maddy Lederman, the drive-in sets a sweet scene and a dramatic contrast for 13-year-old troublemaking, narcissistic and cellphone-addicted Edna:
“Edna’s stay in the desert had established the longest time she’d gone in her life without looking at a screen. This one was framed by the windshield from inside the jeep and suspended in front of the stars.”
Yes, this is a coming of age YA novel about young love and first kisses, but more poignantly, Edna in the Desert tells a timely story of the importance of empathy in the age of cellphones and social media. It looks at our screen-obsessed kids and what is at risk when meaningful human contact and face-to-face interaction becomes secondary to a smart device that becomes their third limb, mirror and hiding place.
When we first meet Edna, her harried parents are driving her away from her posh life in Los Angeles to her grandparents’ remote cabin in the desert. Banished to live in Dream Valley for the summer, “where the best thing to do is daydream,” Edna has no Internet connection and no semblance of her accustomed cushy lifestyle. Edna is faced with long empty days where she must cope with a list of chores spelled out by her reticent and stern grandmother and her only entertainment are books about pioneer women of the Old West.
“In the real world, a million things would have happened in Edna’s day by nine. Many of them would have been texts.”
But then in a truly cliché but well-painted scene, Edna is saved by “the best-looking boy she’d ever seen.” According to Our Digital Daughter Ambassador Maia, “She complains a whole lot and it is very annoying to listen to, until luckily she meets a hot guy named Johnny who saves her when she walks into the desert to try to run away. Johnny is seventeen and the age gap turned me off a bit. But I did like the relationship between Edna and her grandma.”
The book turns, as do the pages, as you happily experience Edna’s life away from Twitter and Facebook where there are such things as unstructured time, a desert oasis and a drive-in. You root for her as her narcissism fades and you realize that only through learning empathy will she herself be worthy of love.
Originally published by "Our Digital Daughters," http://ourdigitaldaughters.com/2016/0...
Published on January 29, 2016 04:16
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Tags:
addiction, character, coming-of-age, compassion, desert, empathy, female, fiction, goodreads, lead, literature, love, novel, off-the-grid, plot-book, reading, realism, romance, social-media, spirituality, story, technology-addiction, teen, tween, young-adult