VVMBookBlog

Merilee conducts her life as a V.O.E.–Very Ordered Existence–and isn’t very happy when something disrupts her rigidly scheduled days.  Her need for a V.O.E. apparently comes from her autistic-like condition known as Asperger’s Syndrome or AS.  While the story never comes out and identifies the syndrome, AS also is evident because of her obsessive interest and focus on dragons, her inability to relate to other people or empathize with their situations, and her peculiar speech patterns.  She is definitely eccentric and different from other 13-year-olds, and has multiple challenges in her life in Jumbo, Texas.

Then Biswick comes to town.  Biswick is a few years younger than Merilee and has moved to Jumbo with his anti-social father, supposedly a poet.  Biswick is described by others as “retarded” and he explains his strange facial features as being caused by his mother who drank too much alcohol while she was pregnant with him.  The last thing Merilee wants is a little Biswick messing up her VOE, but very quickly that’s what she’s got!

As Merilee hangs out around people in her family and town, over time she picks up on their secrets, usually when they don’t know she’s listening or just because she notices things in her day.  And because she isn’t very social, she keeps those secrets safely in her head.  But then as her life is disrupted with new people like Biswick and others, and the consequences of those secrets become more serious, she starts to wonder if she should be telling someone what she knows.   What should she do and will it be too late?

This book is written in the first person so we get insights into how people with AS like Merilee think and how she approaches life.  The author wrote this with her own autistic teenager in mind and tries to show the challenges of being different in the midst of the typical bad behaviors in middle school and in life.

Emma-Jean Lazarus is different from the other girls in her 7th grade class. She’s very intelligent but not very tuned in about how to be socially with other students. To her fellow students Emma-Jean is just strange.

She still misses her father who was killed in a car accident 2 years ago. He was a professor of mathematics and from him Emma-Jean learned to be very logical and objective about everyday life happenings, which helps her to remain involved and appear not to care. But then one day she overhears her friend Colleen crying in the school bathroom and uses her logic, and some computer skills, to help Colleen with her problem. Her apparent success there leads her to look for creative ways to solve other peoples’ problems. But then her attempt to help Colleen blows up and she ends up with very popular Laura Gilroy very angry at both Colleen and Emma-Jean and out for revenge! What will happen now?

I liked this book because for once the main character, Emma-Jean, while experiencing some difficult social situations in school, has some caring and decent adults in her life to help her along the way. Emma-Jean would be a fun student to have in school, as long as she works on her problem-solving strategies!

Read this book and see how Emma-Jean finds out that getting involved with people her own age can really turn out okay.

What happens when you keep a secret about something bad that happened?  What happens when you keep that secret for a LONG time?  And how many other people might be affected by that secret you are keeping?

Ali is 13 years old and has a chance to spend the summer at the lake with her artist Aunt Dulcie and babysit her 4-year-old cousin, Emma.  But Ali’s mom, Dulcie’s sister, doesn’t want her to go. She says the weather at the lake place is rainy all the time, and that the lake is deep and dark and dangerous! What is she so worried about? And who is that third person torn out of the photograph Ali found in the old Nancy Drew book?

Ali runs into more questions when they all get to the lake, but even more when strange little Sissy shows up out of nowhere wanting to play with Emma. Who is Sissy, where does she live, why is she so mean, and what kind of answers might she have to Ali’s questions that no one else will answer?

Mystery, suspense, a terrible secret (and are there really ghosts?) all make this a pretty compelling story.