Skip to main content

Trowbridge Road

Image
By

By Marcella Pixley
Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2020.

It is the summer of 1983 and June Bug Jordan watches Ziggy Karlo arrive at his grandmother's house. June Bug is filled with longing for a friend, an adult to love and care for her, and for something to eat. After June Bug's father died from AIDS, her mother slipped into depression and intense germaphobia and now she refuses to leave the house or cook any food and obsessively cleans everything with bleach. When Ziggy, also lonely and feeling abandoned by his mother, notices June Bug watching him, the two escape to their own imaginary, magical world called "the ninth dimension" where they are able to be in charge of their own lives for a change.

This is a heartrending story about two outcast children struggling to find a loving place to belong. This book is reminiscent of Katherine Paterson's BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA and deals with really difficult topics in an open and honest way. June Bug and Ziggy are lovable children who don't fit in with the kids on their idyllic block and painfully learn what it is like to be abandoned by parents, luckily Ziggy's grandma Nana Jean and June Bug's uncle Toby are caring adults yearning to step in and love the children. This is an emotional book appropriate for mature young readers ready to handle the subject matter.
Labels:

Comments

Test said…
This was so sad! Thank you for the review.
January 7, 2021 at 11:16 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Faker

By
Faker By Gordon Korman New York: Scholastic Press, 2024. Fiction. 214 pages. 12-year-old Trey is used to starting over at a new school -- he has the routine perfectly memorized: make new friends, introduce his dad to the wealthy parents of his new friends, and "Houdini" themselves out of there before they get caught running their latest scam. Trey's dad is a master con artist, and Trey has just been promoted to full-partner. Their new scheme for the next big score brings them to the affluent suburb of Boxelder, TN where Trey's dad has cooked up a fake electric car company for investors to buy into. The only problem is that Trey is starting to grow tired of moving around and never putting down roots, especially after forming a fast friendship with Logan and developing a crush on Kaylee, a socially conscious girl in his class. As Trey longs for a normal life, is there any way he can convince his dad to get out of the family business? Gordon Korman is a perennial favorit...
Post a Comment
Read more