Skip to main content

CHARACTER COUNTS: Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel

Image
By


Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel
By Kimberly Willis Holt
Henry Holt and Company, 2017. Fiction.

Stevie, named after Stevie Nicks, is pretty happy with her life in Taos, New Mexico. She loves working in the garden with her parents and selling their flowers and herbs on the roadside stand they own. She is happy with her little family and glad to know that her parents are her best friends. All of that changes when a drunk driver kills Stevie's parents and she has to uproot her life and move to Little Esther, Texas to live with the grandfather she thought was dead. Stevie finds herself living at a rundown motel in a small town with no flowers, no parents, no public school, and Winston - a stodgy old man. As Stevie learns to flourish in her new environment, she also learns that there are some things about her family she never knew.

Stevie makes this book for me. The story is a pretty standard coming of age story about a girl who discovers herself and her family's secrets while with a grandparent who isn't what he appears to be. That being said, Stevie is a gentle, loving, kind character who shows that someone doesn't have to be flashy or showy to be brave. She is surrounded by a supporting cast of quirky, charming, small-town characters that help keep things interesting. What I loved about this book was the flower metaphor used throughout - I thought that it really worked, especially given Stevie's connection with flowers. This is a great fiction pick for kids on the older end of middle grade - Stevie is in eighth grade - who are looking for good characters and a little bit of romance.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

By DeeDee
Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The New Girl

By
The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more