Reader Girls Blog

Our choice this week is WHERE I BELONG by Gwendolyn Heasley. Summary: Corrinne Corcoran’s upscale Manhattan life is perfectly on track -- until her father announces he’s been laid off and she’s shipped off to Broken Spoke, Texas, to live with her grandparents. All alone in a big public school and forced to take a job shoveling manure, Corrinne is determined to get back to the glamorous life she’s supposed to be living. But as she grudgingly adjusts -- making new friends and finding romance along the way -- this city girl begins to realize that life without credit cards and shopping sprees may not be as bad as it seems.... We know the city girl moving to the country storyline has been done before but this one sounds good and we seriously need a change from picking supernatural titles. Don't you just love the cover? The yellow in her dress pops and the pose looks like they were caught during a tender moment. Looking forward to reading this one. At 304 pages, WHERE I BELONG wi

Reading level: YA Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: HarperTeen; 1 edition (June 29, 2010) Book Summary: Is it possible to experience joy if you don’t experience pain? Is absorbing someone’s pain a gift or a curse? Shusterman explores these central questions in this thought-provoking new book. Sixteen-year-old Tennyson fumes when he learns his twin sister, Bronte, is dating Bruiser, the guy voted Most Likely to Go to Jail, but Bronte insists Bruiser is misunderstood. Tennyson is eventually won over and befriends Bruiser, and that’s when the twins notice something odd. Their cuts and bruises disappear overnight while Bruiser is a mass of new hurts; somehow he takes on the pain, both physical and emotional, of the people he cares for. The story is narrated by Tennyson, Bronte, and Cody, Bruiser’s brother, in prose and by Bruiser in free verse, and the individual voices are nicely distinct. It is Tennyson, though, who stands out as he evolves from self-centered bully to caring young