#3-MAINE! If you love Maine, you’ll be immersed in an original Down East story set amongst the blueberry barrens, with migrant workers, a Mémère and Pépère, tourtière pie, a general store that carries everything you need and don’t need, a summer festival, Robert McCloskey’s Blueberries for Sal, good dogs, and good hearts. So much packed into this character-rich, well-plotted novel. #4-Once inside, you’ll find a fresh, intricately-woven story with themes of friendship, loss, living outside the box, being true to oneself, prejudice, poverty, independence, bravery. I dare you not to peek inside-that dog, the lone blueberry on his nose, oh my! #5-This middle grade novel has the best cover. This review was written for Buried Under Books by jv poore. “(Tigerlilies are weeds) only because somebody said so. I honestly and truly believe that every single person deserves to experience the magic of an unapologetically honest, delightful friendship and the benefit of shifting perceptions. While this is clearly a compelling, captivating story for young readers, it should not be pigeon-holed as a “children’s” book. Realizations are sluggish but sweet and hopeful, like a slowly waking rose bud bursting open to brilliancy. Her growth, while not monumentally exponential, is enlightening and reassuring. Lily is engagingly open-minded and inclusive with a bit of a stubborn streak.

It lets me become more like myself, not more like everyone else.” Lily’s bee houses are carefully stenciled where Salma’s are impulsive and colorful. It is a vibrant thread throughout pulling Lily to Salma, the young migrant worker who shares the affinity for dogs and the sorrow of loss.

The beloved bond built on the unconditional love between girl and dog is artfully illustrated in this book.

“People want us to come and work, but they want us to be invisible.” Painting bee houses at her very own table, Lily earns money for an operation that may help her cherished Lucky see again. Simply stated lessons about friendships, both fleeting and forming, blend beautifully with little lessons about tiny blue bees and Wabanaki blueberry legends.Ī mature little girl, Lily (because “Tigerlily” is a weed, not a name) spends her summers helping in her grandparents’ general store….which is to say the only store in a blueberry-harvesting Maine town busy with migrant workers, locals and tourists from America and Canada.

Rules by cynthia lord sparknotes