Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | J FICTION CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J FICTION CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J FICTION CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A girl in foster care tries to find her birth mother before she loses her forever in this spare and beautifully told novel about last chances and new opportunities.
For a kid bouncing from foster home to foster home, The Book of Changes is the perfect companion. That's why Marin carries three pennies and a pocket-sized I Ching with her everywhere she goes. Yet when everything in her life suddenly starts changing--when Marin lands in a foster home that feels like somewhere she could stay, maybe forever--the pennies don't have any answers for her.
Marin is positive that all the wrongs in her life will be made right if only she can find her birth mother and convince her that they belong together. Marin is close, oh so close--until she gets some unwelcome news and her resolve, like the uneasy Earth far beneath the city of San Francisco, is shaken.
Author Notes
Melanie Crowder lives on the Colorado Front Range, where she is a writer and educator. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of the middle grade novels Parched , A Nearer Moon , and the Lighthouse Keepers series and the young adult novels Audacity and An Uninterrupted View of the Sky . Visit her at MelanieCrowder.com.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In San Francisco, a whisper of a girl learns to tread lightly in life as she navigates being a foster child. Marin Greene, 11, was abandoned at age four by her biological mother and has longed for a reunion ever since. A kind, overworked social worker wants to help Marin become legally adopted, but Marin believes that most adults don't understand what she needs most. Meanwhile, an owl decides to keep watch over Marin, though she is unaware of the bird. Forces of nature are front and center, between impending earthquakes and the beckoning sea and cliffs, as is Marin's devotion to her few treasured possessions: three pennies, a ceramic piggy bank, and her copy of the I Ching. Crowder's (A Nearer Moon) sensitive tale has a poetic, lyrical quality that should entrance readers; most chapters are no longer than a page or two, shifting attention among characters (and, at times, switching to second person) in a way that creates a sense of community and togetherness. Marin is resourceful, determined, and brave, and although her life is not easy, her hope is powerfully felt. Ages 8-12. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Eleven-year-old Marin Greene has had five foster mothers in seven years. In each foster home, she is obedient and quiet, clinging to the hope that when her birth mother, Summer, comes back, she will realize that keeping Marinwould be no trouble at all. Then Marin is placed with a new foster mother, Lucy, a kind doctor with a tragic history of her own. Marin likes Lucy, but she wont allow herself to love her: she knows Summer is out there, and she begins a journey to find her. Throughout, Marins loneliness and longing are palpable: What would it be like, she wonders, to have a real mother? Not a biological one or a temporary one, but one who chose the job, who wanted the work, who fought for the right to bear that title. What would it be liketo have a mother who wanted her? Luckily for Marin--and for readers rooting for her--Lucy wants a daughter just as badly. Set in foggy, earthquake-prone San Francisco (the tectonic plates make a fine metaphor for Marins shifting loyalties and emotions), this multilayered novel also weaves in the perspectives of a rule-abiding social worker and a wise old owl who keeps watch over the hatchling from afar. The result is a contemplative, rich, and beautifully written story that honors foster-to-adoptive families. rachel l. smith (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
An owl watches as 11-year-old Marin, a hatchling of sorts, finds her way out of the foster care system and into the home of the successful and openhearted doctor, Lucy. Marin's only possessions are a worn copy of the I Ching and the three pennies that rattle around in her birth mother's piggy bank. When she learns that Lucy wants to adopt her, she makes one last effort to find her birth mother, who abandoned her at age four. In short chapters exploring the inner worlds of the owl, Lucy, rule-following case worker Gilda, and even the shifting tectonic plates beneath San Francisco, Crowder illuminates the extent to which Marin is unable to grasp the love and possibility that awaits if she can accept her birth mother's choice. Though the logistics of Marin's eventual meet-up with her birth mother may strain credulity for some readers, Marin's emotional landscape remains utterly true. Crowder's keen sense of storytelling, even in the smallest moments, shines in this moving exploration of the mother-child bond.--Barnes, Jennifer Copyright 2017 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Eleven-year-old Marin knows how to stay under the radar. Having been in the foster system since she was four, she knows a thing or two about getting by and has just three rules for survival. The third rule is the most important: "Never, under any circumstances, tell anyone that you're waiting for your mother to come back for you." Marin travels light as she bounces from family to family-just a couple of changes of clothes and a few mementos from her mother (a copy of the I Ching, three pennies, and a ceramic piggy bank with a single nickel in it). The language of this short and intense story is spare and evocative, and the chapters are brief and impressionistic. The third-person point of view shifts among Marin; Lucy, the grieving doctor who hopes to adopt Marin; Gilda, the rule-following social worker; and Owl, who roosts across the street from the doctor and has taken an interest in "the hatchling." The fault lines that lie beneath the city of San Francisco get a chapter or two as well. When Marin discovers that Lucy plans to adopt her, thus closing the door to the possibility of her mother ever returning, she steps up her hunt for clues to her identity. Marin is endearing, and readers will worry about her as she plunges headfirst into catastrophe. VERDICT This tender tale of human frailty tugs at heartstrings and will satisfy tweens who like to read with a tissue handy.-Brenda Kahn, Tenakill Middle School, Closter, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
As tectonic plates shift underneath San Francisco, 11-year-old Marin rearranges the spaces in her own heart for the woman who wants to be her mother. A ward of the state since her birth mother abandoned her at age 4, Marin Greene has finally become adoptable. And Dr. Lucy Chang really hopes to adopt her. Marin has always believed that the mother she barely remembers would return and the I Ching would connect them. But it's not the three cast pennies used in I Ching divination, it's Marin's own detective work that leads up to their meeting and her devastating discovery that what she'd been told was true: Summer Greene didn't and doesn't want to be a mother. An out-of-the-box solution, the interracial adoption of a white child by a single woman, a lesbian, Asian-American doctor, is the right one. This moving story is carefully crafted, woven together in short, short chapters focusing on different characters: Summer, Lucy, a rules-following social worker, a Confucius-quoting owl, and the tectonic plates underlying California. As they meet and rub against each other, tension mounts. The imminent earthquake and the threat of another failed placement add further suspense to a moving narrative that, at its heart, considers family bonds. The inclusion of Owl will alert readers that this tale is not entirely realistic, but it is entirely satisfying. A beautifully written and thoroughly modern family breaking-and-making story. (Fiction. 9-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Three Pennies 1 In the musty attic of an old Victorian home, a slight girl knelt beside a leaded glass window. Light seeped through the colored panes, and the trusses creaked as the house groaned, its weight shifting on the unsteady ground. Summer in San Francisco is a foggy business, so while kids in other towns ran through sprinklers and flung themselves off rope swings into cool green lakes, on this twenty-third day of July, Marin stayed indoors. Her knees pressed into floorboards milled in the previous century. She wore a striped cardigan over her bony shoulders and thick cotton socks up to her knees. A single crease between the girl's eyebrows betrayed the serious nature of her task that afternoon. Marin asked a question aloud, her thin voice barely disrupting the air in the narrow attic. She tossed three pennies onto the floor and peered into the small book in her lap, the spine so thoroughly creased at that particular spot that the pages lay open without complaint. She scratched a mark on a scrap of paper and collected the pennies again. Six times she threw the coins. Six times she made a mark. The fog rolled in and hung about the scrollwork eaves of the house, pressing against the attic window as if it wished to see the I Ching's answer for itself. Excerpted from Three Pennies by Melanie Crowder All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
