Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J FICTION SMI | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
In a voice that resonates with insight and humor, New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith tells the story of a teenage girl who must face down her grief and reclaim her place in the world with the help of her intertribal community.
It's been six months since Cassidy Rain Berghoff's best friend, Galen, died, and up until now she has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around Aunt Georgia's Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again, with a new job photographing the campers for her town's newspaper.
Soon, Rain has to decide how involved she wants to become in Indian Camp. Does she want to keep a professional distance from her fellow Native teens? And, though she is still grieving, will she be able to embrace new friends and new beginnings?
In partnership with We Need Diverse Books
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-9-Rain and Galen have been friends forever, but for Rain's 14th birthday, the thrill of finding that her burgeoning romantic feelings are being reciprocated puts the evening into a special-memory category. The next morning, she learns that Galen was killed in an accident on the way home. Plunged into despair, Rain refuses to attend the funeral and cuts herself off from her friends. Skipping to six months later, the main portion of the story takes place as she thinks about Galen's upcoming birthday and summer plans are complicated by the girl's Aunt Georgia's Indian Camp and political efforts to cut its funding. Rain participates in nothing and her family members, loving though they are, seem preoccupied with their own needs and concerns. Gradually, Rain's love of photography resurfaces and lands her an assignment with the local newspaper. She becomes involved in examining her own heritage, the stereotypical reactions to it, and her own small-town limitations. There is a surprising amount of humor in this tender novel. It is one of the best portrayals around of kids whose heritage is mixed but still very important in their lives. As feelings about the public funding of Indian Camp heat up, the emotions and values of the characters remain crystal clear and completely in focus. It's Rain's story and she cannot be reduced to simple labels. A wonderful novel of a present-day teen and her "patchwork tribe."-Carol A. Edwards, Sonoma County Library, Santa Rosa, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Multiple plot lines and nonlinear storytelling may make it difficult to enter Smith's (Jingle Dancer) complex novel, but the warmth and texture of the writing eventually serve as ample reward for readers. The sensitive yet witty narrator, 14-year-old Cassidy Rain Berghoff, grows up in a small Kansas town as one of the few people with some Native American heritage. That experience alone might challenge Rain, but Smith creates a welter of conflicts. Rain's mother is dead (she was struck by lightning), and as the novel opens, her best friend is killed in a car accident just after he and Rain realize their friendship has grown into romance. Six months later, her older brother urges her to go to her great-aunt's Indian Camp. At first she shrugs it off, but later volunteers to photograph the camp for the town paper and begins to share her Aunt Georgia's commitment to it. When public funding for the camp becomes a contested issue in the city council, Rain decides to enroll. Some of Smith's devices such as opening each chapter with a snippet from Rain's journal add depth and clarify Rain's relationships for readers, although other elements (the detailing of song lyrics playing in the background, for instance) seem stilted. Even so, readers will feel the affection of Rain's loose-knit family and admire the way that they, like the author with the audience, allow Rain to draw her own conclusions about who she is and what her heritage means to her. Ages 10-14. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Fourteen-year-old Rain, of mixed Native American heritage, is devastated by her best friend's death. She comes out of her self-imposed seclusion to shoot photos for a local newspaper feature on a summer youth program for Native Americans in her Kansas hometown. The engaging first-person narrative convincingly portrays RainÆs grieving process and addresses the varying degrees of prejudice she encounters. From HORN BOOK Spring 2002, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Tender, funny, and full of sharp wordplay, Smith's first novel deals with a whole host of interconnecting issues, but the center is Rain herself. At just 14, Rain and her best friend Galen promise always to celebrate their birthdays; hers on New Year's Day, his on the Fourth of July. They had just begun to see themselves not just as best friends but as girl and boy that New Year's Eve night, when Galen is killed in a freak accident. Rain has already lost her mother and her Dad's stationed in Guam. She's close to her Grandpa, her older brother, and his girlfriend, who realize her loss and sorrow but have complicated lives of their own. Her response to Galen's death is tied to her tentative explorations of her own mixed Native American and German/Irish heritage, her need and desire to learn photography and to wield it well, and the general stirrings of self and sex common to her age. Rain has to maneuver all of this through local politics involving Galen's mother and the local American Indian Youth Camp (with its handful of local Indian teens, and Rain's erstwhile "second-best friend" who is black). What's amazing here is Rain's insight into her own pain, and how cleanly she uses language to contain it. (Fiction. 11-14)
