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Indian Summer
To Joni McCord, summer means swimming at the local pool or hanging out at the mall. To Sarah Birdsong, it means swimming in the pure waters of the lake, and having a Coke at the little reservation store. But this summer, the girls will be roommates, since Joni's father will be the doctor on Sarah's Iroquois reservation. And even before they've met, they know it won't be easy. At first the girls try to be friends. But Joni is homesick, and Sarah is moody. Whenever they begin to have fun, Joni always manages to say or do something that sends Sarah into a rage. Joni is taunted by Sarah's friends, who tell her to return to her own world. Can Sarah and Joni find the courage to overcome their differences and make peace?
183 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 12, 2018
I knew just from reading the synopsis that the way Joni would make Sarah mad was to say something insulting about Native Americans.
It was a nice touch that the author dedicated the book to the Native American kids who are keeping their way of life alive. And that she shared she toured some reservations in NY.
It was easy to see how Joni got off on the wrong foot. She wrote to Sarah asking if she had silver and turquoise jewelry like they see Indians wearing, and if they do rain dances like in the movies, and they could send a message by smoke signal. Those are no-nos. I could tell at the beginning that this was going to be a lesson in what not to do to Native Americans.
Sarah got her back by writing that her school had an exhibition on tomahawks, ones that were used to scalp white people and you can still see dried blood on them. She also sealed one of her letters by saying Sealed with Blood and Guts, playing up to the savage image white people get of Indians from movies. Sarah told her they eat dog stew and that white people disappear on the reservation, their bodies appearing once the snow melts or the river is dragged.
It was enlightening that Sarah's dad, the chief, wanted Native American doctors on the reservation. He was mad that all the doctors who come are white. When Native Americans get educated they leave and go off into the white world.
It was terrible to have Mikey, her little brother, see Native American men at the reservation for the first time point his hand like a gun and say bang, bang. You don't act like you're shooting someone!
Palefaces was a term for white people. They knew that white people made fun of them and called them names. Some of the Native Americans didn't like to have modern things in their homes, like TVs, choosing to live the old way of life.
Mikey said "how" in greeting and spoke in broken English like Sarah was an idiot.
I knew already that some Native Americans like to be called that and some like to be called Indian, so it just depends on the person really. But Joni asked Sarah if her kerchief had a certain Native American design and Sarah said Joni was a Native American because she was born in the USA too, but Sarah is a part of the Iroquois Nation so she's an Indian. I was shocked that any of them consider white people to be Native Americans.
They pick flowers, dry them and make them into bouquets to sell. They use honeysuckle to make potpourri.
White people couldn't live on the reservation, only enrolled Indians.
Sarah is descended from a chief who gave George Washington and the army a lot of corn and showed them how to cook it. If it wasn't for the help of the Indians they wouldn't have made it. She wondered if that story was taught in history books. I already knew that a lot of things were neglected in history books, that one side of the story is told and it favors the white people. So it was an awakening that Indians wonder if their own stories that they have passed down, the truth of the good of their side, is even represented.
I like that she made the point that in return for their help, the Indians were made to move around the country and put on reservations full of land that no one wanted. She represented the Indian viewpoint well.
Maw Maw pointed out that Indians weren't the first to practice scalping, and French traders scalped too.
They called their religion Longhouse, because that's where their ceremonies and meetings are held. They're called People of the Longhouse. White people can't come inside.
It was such a good point she had Chief Birdsong make that they don't hunt for fun. They live off of the land by hunting and fishing. They don't mount the animals; they kill them quickly and use everything.
I had heard this before but I liked hearing it again. They can only tell stories at certain times. They don't during the growing season in case the spirits who help things grow stop their work and listen in.
Mikey made the mistake of saying that Columbus discovered America and found Indians. Sarah made a good point in saying how could he find them when they weren't lost? They fed the white people and kept them alive during the winter. It showed that without them, the colonists never would have survived.
Joni couldn't understand why they were talking about things that happened so long ago. I thought the author did a good job in displaying both sides of this. The white family was trying to understand the Indian viewpoint, and the Indians were mistrustful and mad about the prejudices and stereotypes.
They can adopt white people into their clans and give them Indian names. Then they give the person wampum and call the adopted name "a name hung around the neck."
They don't call their clothes for powwows costumes. They call them their traditional dress.
People would tell Sarah she was a cute squaw, or Pocahontas, like every Indian girl is named that. You need to use the person's name, not refer to them as the one famous Indian you know.
The author used the trip in town to show the treatment that Sarah received from white people. That was a good idea because so far the kids on the reservation treated Joni like crap. They were terrible, especially saying she couldn't come inside the store and when they pushed her around on the tire swing and splashed her in the lake. She could have drowned, even said she was going to because she couldn't swim very well and they never stopped. That was vicious and terrible. So it was important to show how mean white people could be. At the store the white kids called her squaw and said their school was good until they let Indians in. The clerk heard the commotion, but the boys blamed Sarah and lied about her stealing, and he believed them and made Sarah and Joni by association turn out their pockets. The author kept it balanced.
I liked Maw Maw, how she was wise and knew just the right things to say to get the white family to understand their way of life. She alone noticed the tension between Sarah and Joni when the parents were completely oblivious. But it was after the scene at the store when the girls came home separately and Maw Maw noticed it but chose to let them come to her when they were ready that I just got tired of it. That was like the 5th time she knew something was wrong with them but just let it go. Somebody talk about it and get it out in the open and move past it. It was so redundant.
Wampum is made of clam shells strung on elm bark. They kept records by writing them into their wampum belts. This is how they would send messages to each other. Red wampum belts were made if the chief wanted to go to war. Another tribe would accept the belt if they wanted to join the war. If a tribe didn't want to go to war, the chief would throw the belt on the ground. I had never heard of this and it was really interesting.
Chief Birdsong was so mad because their wampum belts were in museums and their stories belong with them.
It was at this moment that Joni understood Sarah better. Sarah treated Joni on the reservation the way she herself was treated off of the reservation. She had to deal with prejudice every time she left the reservation, and she had her dad's problems to deal with, all the issues he had to solve and his mistrust of the white world. She vowed to try harder to be a friend.
I had never heard of water drums. You pour water into the drum, turn it over and let the water soak the deerskin and you play it with the skin wet. It makes a different sound. That was cool.
I was with Joni in the beginning thinking that Sarah had taken her doll, but when Sarah said she didn't take it I believed her. A while later Joni found her torn and cut doll hanging in the tree and went off on Sarah. When she was alone in the house she took Sara's clan necklace she was going to wear at the powwow and was going to hide it. That's never the right thing to do, especially retaliating based on an assumption.
Joni conveniently came upon the store as Sarah was questioning her friends. They admitted to stealing Joni's doll, putting feathers and eyes on a balloon to make a scary Indian face outside the window, and showing up to mess with her when they knew Sarah was taking her to the lake.
And of course the necklace was damaged while Joni was running back. That was a good lesson in not jumping to conclusions, falsely accusing people, retaliating, and accusing people when you don't have any proof. Don't act unless you know the truth. And don't act in anger because you'll regret it.
I didn't understand how some of the necklace came loose, or how her dad stitched it up. I had no idea what that meant, what he did to fix the necklace and how he could use stitches that he performs as a doctor to stitch a necklace up the way it was handmade.
It was cool how at the powwow they had a booth that showed all the food that the Indians told the colonists about. Apples, wild cherries, peaches, plums, grapes, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries, strawberries, cranberries. Corn, green beans, purple Lima beans, wild peas, squash, pumpkins, and melons. Mushrooms.
It was creative the way the author related the tale of the three sisters to illustrate that that was how people were supposed to live as well. The corn, beans and squash are planted together, and they each retain their own identity but they grow together. People should share the earth even though they're different. People have to get along but everyone can keep what makes them different.
Joni ended up coming off worse than Sarah, because Sarah had never taken her things. Joni was a guest there and slept in Sarah's bedroom, and she stole her necklace. Sarah had been bad the whole time, but she said when she went off to see her friends alone she'd try to convince them that Joni was different from other white people. Idk if that was the author's intent, to show that white people were the worst out of the two, but that's how it came off. What Joni did was terrible, especially knowing Sarah's absentee mom had made Sarah that necklace and she was going to wear it in the powwow. Just bad all around.
The powwow was so annoying. There were these punk white kids saying prejudiced things and I expected Joni to say something to get them to stop, but she didn't. She just wondered if they were going to ruin the whole powwow. Why were they even there if they didn't like Indians? Mikey wanted to join the friendship dance but Joni told him it was only for Indians. Then she saw corn and thought of the 3 sisters, got up and just joined in on the dance. Sarah's friends noticed her and didn't like it, until all of the dancers and drummers had stopped to glare at her. She kept dancing even through all of that and I found that really annoying. You don't get up and join in on a dance that's only for Indians unless you're invited. But the friendship dance nowadays is for everyone. They invite the audience to come up and dance it with them, and it's just holding hands and stomping your feet. So I didn't know what the big deal was. It must have been different in the 90s when this was written and they didn't allow white people to dance.
I was so disappointed with this. I saw this at a local book sale and the title jumped out at me. I had to get it no matter what it was about. Anything to do with Indians has me interested. I love that culture, so I couldn't pass this book up. The thing that worried me was the relationship with the girls so I decided to read this early in my summer and save the more promising books for later. That turned out to be the case. If you like to read about two girls fighting, then this would be a good book for you. Their arguments and freezing silences dominated the entire novel. I was worried there wouldn't be enough time where they got along, and that was the case. They fought until almost the very end, the last few pages of the book. So the ending--where Sarah was going to visit her mom in Washington DC and Joni told her she could stop at her house along the way--was so unbelievable. There needed to be a deeper understanding of each other's cultures before I ever believed these two could be friends.
The only good thing about the book was the information on this tribe of Indians. There were pieces of information on their culture, and their way of viewing the world. This is perhaps the most informative piece on the views of Indians, their beliefs of white people and the treatment they receive from the government and white people, and how it is to live on reservations. The author certainly learned a lot during her stay on several Iroquois reservations. I liked the pride that they had in putting on a powwow for other Indians as well as whites. They wanted to put on a good show, make good food and entertain the audience. If only the girls hadn't fought so badly and for so long. I liked Maw Maw and Chief Birdsong. He had anger toward the government and white people about different things, which at first made me think he was going to be an antagonist towards them, and he rightfully got upset when one of them said something ignorant and insulting, but he ended up explaining things. And he took a little boy pointing a gun-shaped hand at him better than anyone else would.
I guess this is what would happen if these two cultures came together. If neither was careful, both judged each other based on their past experiences with the other race, got upset at everything the other didn't know about them or had that they didn't have, and didn't try to understand the other. But it doesn't make for enjoyable reading. The constant fighting was stressful. Sarah was up and down; one minute she'd get mad, the next she'd be happy and share parts of her life and let Joni try on something or have something. It was crazy. Joni would try to get along, but she kept unknowingly saying things that were insulting and insensitive without realizing it. I just wanted everyone to get along. Because she had them fighting and not speaking for so much of the book, I didn't buy that they were friends at the end.
It was a nice touch that the author dedicated the book to the Native American kids who are keeping their way of life alive. And that she shared she toured some reservations in NY.
It was easy to see how Joni got off on the wrong foot. She wrote to Sarah asking if she had silver and turquoise jewelry like they see Indians wearing, and if they do rain dances like in the movies, and they could send a message by smoke signal. Those are no-nos. I could tell at the beginning that this was going to be a lesson in what not to do to Native Americans.
Sarah got her back by writing that her school had an exhibition on tomahawks, ones that were used to scalp white people and you can still see dried blood on them. She also sealed one of her letters by saying Sealed with Blood and Guts, playing up to the savage image white people get of Indians from movies. Sarah told her they eat dog stew and that white people disappear on the reservation, their bodies appearing once the snow melts or the river is dragged.
It was enlightening that Sarah's dad, the chief, wanted Native American doctors on the reservation. He was mad that all the doctors who come are white. When Native Americans get educated they leave and go off into the white world.
It was terrible to have Mikey, her little brother, see Native American men at the reservation for the first time point his hand like a gun and say bang, bang. You don't act like you're shooting someone!
Palefaces was a term for white people. They knew that white people made fun of them and called them names. Some of the Native Americans didn't like to have modern things in their homes, like TVs, choosing to live the old way of life.
Mikey said "how" in greeting and spoke in broken English like Sarah was an idiot.
I knew already that some Native Americans like to be called that and some like to be called Indian, so it just depends on the person really. But Joni asked Sarah if her kerchief had a certain Native American design and Sarah said Joni was a Native American because she was born in the USA too, but Sarah is a part of the Iroquois Nation so she's an Indian. I was shocked that any of them consider white people to be Native Americans.
They pick flowers, dry them and make them into bouquets to sell. They use honeysuckle to make potpourri.
White people couldn't live on the reservation, only enrolled Indians.
Sarah is descended from a chief who gave George Washington and the army a lot of corn and showed them how to cook it. If it wasn't for the help of the Indians they wouldn't have made it. She wondered if that story was taught in history books. I already knew that a lot of things were neglected in history books, that one side of the story is told and it favors the white people. So it was an awakening that Indians wonder if their own stories that they have passed down, the truth of the good of their side, is even represented.
I like that she made the point that in return for their help, the Indians were made to move around the country and put on reservations full of land that no one wanted. She represented the Indian viewpoint well.
Maw Maw pointed out that Indians weren't the first to practice scalping, and French traders scalped too.
They called their religion Longhouse, because that's where their ceremonies and meetings are held. They're called People of the Longhouse. White people can't come inside.
It was such a good point she had Chief Birdsong make that they don't hunt for fun. They live off of the land by hunting and fishing. They don't mount the animals; they kill them quickly and use everything.
I had heard this before but I liked hearing it again. They can only tell stories at certain times. They don't during the growing season in case the spirits who help things grow stop their work and listen in.
Mikey made the mistake of saying that Columbus discovered America and found Indians. Sarah made a good point in saying how could he find them when they weren't lost? They fed the white people and kept them alive during the winter. It showed that without them, the colonists never would have survived.
Joni couldn't understand why they were talking about things that happened so long ago. I thought the author did a good job in displaying both sides of this. The white family was trying to understand the Indian viewpoint, and the Indians were mistrustful and mad about the prejudices and stereotypes.
They can adopt white people into their clans and give them Indian names. Then they give the person wampum and call the adopted name "a name hung around the neck."
They don't call their clothes for powwows costumes. They call them their traditional dress.
People would tell Sarah she was a cute squaw, or Pocahontas, like every Indian girl is named that. You need to use the person's name, not refer to them as the one famous Indian you know.
The author used the trip in town to show the treatment that Sarah received from white people. That was a good idea because so far the kids on the reservation treated Joni like crap. They were terrible, especially saying she couldn't come inside the store and when they pushed her around on the tire swing and splashed her in the lake. She could have drowned, even said she was going to because she couldn't swim very well and they never stopped. That was vicious and terrible. So it was important to show how mean white people could be. At the store the white kids called her squaw and said their school was good until they let Indians in. The clerk heard the commotion, but the boys blamed Sarah and lied about her stealing, and he believed them and made Sarah and Joni by association turn out their pockets. The author kept it balanced.
I liked Maw Maw, how she was wise and knew just the right things to say to get the white family to understand their way of life. She alone noticed the tension between Sarah and Joni when the parents were completely oblivious. But it was after the scene at the store when the girls came home separately and Maw Maw noticed it but chose to let them come to her when they were ready that I just got tired of it. That was like the 5th time she knew something was wrong with them but just let it go. Somebody talk about it and get it out in the open and move past it. It was so redundant.
Wampum is made of clam shells strung on elm bark. They kept records by writing them into their wampum belts. This is how they would send messages to each other. Red wampum belts were made if the chief wanted to go to war. Another tribe would accept the belt if they wanted to join the war. If a tribe didn't want to go to war, the chief would throw the belt on the ground. I had never heard of this and it was really interesting.
Chief Birdsong was so mad because their wampum belts were in museums and their stories belong with them.
It was at this moment that Joni understood Sarah better. Sarah treated Joni on the reservation the way she herself was treated off of the reservation. She had to deal with prejudice every time she left the reservation, and she had her dad's problems to deal with, all the issues he had to solve and his mistrust of the white world. She vowed to try harder to be a friend.
I had never heard of water drums. You pour water into the drum, turn it over and let the water soak the deerskin and you play it with the skin wet. It makes a different sound. That was cool.
I was with Joni in the beginning thinking that Sarah had taken her doll, but when Sarah said she didn't take it I believed her. A while later Joni found her torn and cut doll hanging in the tree and went off on Sarah. When she was alone in the house she took Sara's clan necklace she was going to wear at the powwow and was going to hide it. That's never the right thing to do, especially retaliating based on an assumption.
Joni conveniently came upon the store as Sarah was questioning her friends. They admitted to stealing Joni's doll, putting feathers and eyes on a balloon to make a scary Indian face outside the window, and showing up to mess with her when they knew Sarah was taking her to the lake.
And of course the necklace was damaged while Joni was running back. That was a good lesson in not jumping to conclusions, falsely accusing people, retaliating, and accusing people when you don't have any proof. Don't act unless you know the truth. And don't act in anger because you'll regret it.
I didn't understand how some of the necklace came loose, or how her dad stitched it up. I had no idea what that meant, what he did to fix the necklace and how he could use stitches that he performs as a doctor to stitch a necklace up the way it was handmade.
It was cool how at the powwow they had a booth that showed all the food that the Indians told the colonists about. Apples, wild cherries, peaches, plums, grapes, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries, strawberries, cranberries. Corn, green beans, purple Lima beans, wild peas, squash, pumpkins, and melons. Mushrooms.
It was creative the way the author related the tale of the three sisters to illustrate that that was how people were supposed to live as well. The corn, beans and squash are planted together, and they each retain their own identity but they grow together. People should share the earth even though they're different. People have to get along but everyone can keep what makes them different.
Joni ended up coming off worse than Sarah, because Sarah had never taken her things. Joni was a guest there and slept in Sarah's bedroom, and she stole her necklace. Sarah had been bad the whole time, but she said when she went off to see her friends alone she'd try to convince them that Joni was different from other white people. Idk if that was the author's intent, to show that white people were the worst out of the two, but that's how it came off. What Joni did was terrible, especially knowing Sarah's absentee mom had made Sarah that necklace and she was going to wear it in the powwow. Just bad all around.
The powwow was so annoying. There were these punk white kids saying prejudiced things and I expected Joni to say something to get them to stop, but she didn't. She just wondered if they were going to ruin the whole powwow. Why were they even there if they didn't like Indians? Mikey wanted to join the friendship dance but Joni told him it was only for Indians. Then she saw corn and thought of the 3 sisters, got up and just joined in on the dance. Sarah's friends noticed her and didn't like it, until all of the dancers and drummers had stopped to glare at her. She kept dancing even through all of that and I found that really annoying. You don't get up and join in on a dance that's only for Indians unless you're invited. But the friendship dance nowadays is for everyone. They invite the audience to come up and dance it with them, and it's just holding hands and stomping your feet. So I didn't know what the big deal was. It must have been different in the 90s when this was written and they didn't allow white people to dance.
I was so disappointed with this. I saw this at a local book sale and the title jumped out at me. I had to get it no matter what it was about. Anything to do with Indians has me interested. I love that culture, so I couldn't pass this book up. The thing that worried me was the relationship with the girls so I decided to read this early in my summer and save the more promising books for later. That turned out to be the case. If you like to read about two girls fighting, then this would be a good book for you. Their arguments and freezing silences dominated the entire novel. I was worried there wouldn't be enough time where they got along, and that was the case. They fought until almost the very end, the last few pages of the book. So the ending--where Sarah was going to visit her mom in Washington DC and Joni told her she could stop at her house along the way--was so unbelievable. There needed to be a deeper understanding of each other's cultures before I ever believed these two could be friends.
The only good thing about the book was the information on this tribe of Indians. There were pieces of information on their culture, and their way of viewing the world. This is perhaps the most informative piece on the views of Indians, their beliefs of white people and the treatment they receive from the government and white people, and how it is to live on reservations. The author certainly learned a lot during her stay on several Iroquois reservations. I liked the pride that they had in putting on a powwow for other Indians as well as whites. They wanted to put on a good show, make good food and entertain the audience. If only the girls hadn't fought so badly and for so long. I liked Maw Maw and Chief Birdsong. He had anger toward the government and white people about different things, which at first made me think he was going to be an antagonist towards them, and he rightfully got upset when one of them said something ignorant and insulting, but he ended up explaining things. And he took a little boy pointing a gun-shaped hand at him better than anyone else would.
I guess this is what would happen if these two cultures came together. If neither was careful, both judged each other based on their past experiences with the other race, got upset at everything the other didn't know about them or had that they didn't have, and didn't try to understand the other. But it doesn't make for enjoyable reading. The constant fighting was stressful. Sarah was up and down; one minute she'd get mad, the next she'd be happy and share parts of her life and let Joni try on something or have something. It was crazy. Joni would try to get along, but she kept unknowingly saying things that were insulting and insensitive without realizing it. I just wanted everyone to get along. Because she had them fighting and not speaking for so much of the book, I didn't buy that they were friends at the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 22, 2018
Eleven-year-old Joni McCord and her family are spending a month of summer vacation at an Indian reservation where her father, a doctor, will be temporarily filling in. Joni's little brother, as well as her mother, who will be setting up a library on the reservation, will be there, also. Sarah Birdsong is the Indian Chief's daughter and the same age as Joni. Although the two girls' worlds are very different and there are many misunderstandings between them over the course of their month together, they eventually become friends and learn to respect one another.
April 9, 2021
This is the best book ever to be read😁💖💖
July 18, 2023
3.5 stars
July 17, 2025
What a great book very educational
Read
December 30, 2020Cross-posted from my blog where there's more information on where I got my copy and everything.
This one is trying very hard. Very, very hard. Considering this book and I are about the same age, I can see that at the time, it probably was okay. The author talks about her research in the acknowledgments and you can see how hard she's trying to get it right... but she's a white author trying to write from the perspective of a young Native girl.
It's kind of a dated idea, too, sort of City Mouse/Country Mouse. Probably in the early 90s, this was a good book, and probably a lot of little white kids learned a lot, and it works hard to debunk many stereotypes and hurtful things. It would just be better coming from an author who was actually Native American. The writing is okay, and I've read another book by the author that I enjoyed, but it's not so amazing that I want to hold onto it. Sometimes the POV changes could be confusing, without enough distinctness to each voice. Sometimes, also, the author would be so eager to make a point, they'd lose the POV altogether and just insert random information without it seeming to actually come from either character, and I'd just be like, "Who's saying that???"
Ultimately, I don't think it's harmful, but I think it's dated (Walkmans and tapes!), and I think I would prefer to give the shelf space to something else because while the author did a great deal of research into the culture, the experience she's writing about is still something she'll never know in the way they do, and because of that, it comes off as a little ham-fisted. Not the worst, but there is better these days.
Two mostly unrelated things: This cover. Joni is supposed to have dark brown hair that is only a little lighter than Sarah's. Thanks for reading the book, cover artist! And another is - this is a thing that bugs me in kids' voices. Why do parents seem to think they can dictate not just what their kids do, but how they feel about it? Like, Joni is allowed to feel upset that her summer plans got cancelled! Her father says at the beginning, "You sound as if you're being forced to go up there" and... well, yeah, she is. The adults in her life are telling her to a thing she doesn't want to do, how is that not being forced?
I'm not saying they're in the wrong for doing it, just that it's a pet peeve when adults act like kids having emotions they don't approve of is some great misbehaviour. And pet peeves make me ranty.
This one is trying very hard. Very, very hard. Considering this book and I are about the same age, I can see that at the time, it probably was okay. The author talks about her research in the acknowledgments and you can see how hard she's trying to get it right... but she's a white author trying to write from the perspective of a young Native girl.
It's kind of a dated idea, too, sort of City Mouse/Country Mouse. Probably in the early 90s, this was a good book, and probably a lot of little white kids learned a lot, and it works hard to debunk many stereotypes and hurtful things. It would just be better coming from an author who was actually Native American. The writing is okay, and I've read another book by the author that I enjoyed, but it's not so amazing that I want to hold onto it. Sometimes the POV changes could be confusing, without enough distinctness to each voice. Sometimes, also, the author would be so eager to make a point, they'd lose the POV altogether and just insert random information without it seeming to actually come from either character, and I'd just be like, "Who's saying that???"
Ultimately, I don't think it's harmful, but I think it's dated (Walkmans and tapes!), and I think I would prefer to give the shelf space to something else because while the author did a great deal of research into the culture, the experience she's writing about is still something she'll never know in the way they do, and because of that, it comes off as a little ham-fisted. Not the worst, but there is better these days.
Two mostly unrelated things: This cover. Joni is supposed to have dark brown hair that is only a little lighter than Sarah's. Thanks for reading the book, cover artist! And another is - this is a thing that bugs me in kids' voices. Why do parents seem to think they can dictate not just what their kids do, but how they feel about it? Like, Joni is allowed to feel upset that her summer plans got cancelled! Her father says at the beginning, "You sound as if you're being forced to go up there" and... well, yeah, she is. The adults in her life are telling her to a thing she doesn't want to do, how is that not being forced?
I'm not saying they're in the wrong for doing it, just that it's a pet peeve when adults act like kids having emotions they don't approve of is some great misbehaviour. And pet peeves make me ranty.
August 12, 2023
I read this book when I was a child & it is the earliest book I remember falling in love with
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews