LitPick Review
This is a fictional book written to help you understand how life goes on. It's about an eleven year girl named Casey whose mother dies in tragic accident. She is left without any motherly influence and her grieving father is unable to give her the love and attention she needs. With her mother's death she is forced to get a job to help support the family and search for someone to replace her mother's affection. She has two choices. She can either work in a bait shop where the shop owner hates kids or she can work for a new African American family who greets her with a gun. Which job will she take? Will her relationship with her father improve?
Opinion:
At the beginning of the book it was difficult for me to understand, but that is what made we want to keep turning the pages. The problem I had was Mary Kay Abbott jumped right into the storyline, but latter in the book it made more and more sense. This book is not like most books I read. For some reason I still wanted to keep going on to see what happened next. She made the characters so real and made you feel like you were there, step by step. This book was so interesting and so alive. Even the cover of the book grabbed my attention. At first I really didn't like the book, but as I got more into the book the more I liked it. I would recommend this book to my friends and teens because I don't feel like a 10 year old and below would understand the book. Last, I would like to say this book truly came from Mary Kay Abbott's heart.
Comments on the above review from the author
Misconceptions:
1. Casey is not forced to get a job to help out the family financially.
2. She doesn't have to choose a job between one at a bait shop and one working for an African American family. There is no bait shop mentioned anywhere in this entire story. Which job will she choose? There is never any mention that she has to get a job. This coming of age story is about one girl's search to find a friend, about redemption, and about forgiveness and love.
The setting is a small, isolated community up in the San Bernardino mountains of Southern California. Yes, Casey runs into a cranky new neighbor who is African American, the woman forcing Casey off her property with a shotgun (a short cut Casey has taken on her bike each day). Yes, there is a general store owner who hates kids, Casey especially. Despite Casey's attempts to befriend this woman, she has failed. Casey steps up and assists the newcomer on several occasions but these are not appreciated. After receiving no gratitude this makes her think this new woman is just like the store owner--she must hate kids, too.
Casey retreats farther and farther away from both her parents and the little community taking frequent trips in her skiff out to "her" little island out in the middle of the lake with her only friend, her dog Buster.
Meanwhile, her teenaged brother is sent to a juvenile delinquent's home because he steals from the store. Although he and she have never been close, this makes Casey that much lonelier. When her alcoholic mother dies in a car accident on Christmas eve, Casey flips out and lashes out at her dad...who doesn't really know how to raise a girl alone and who seems totally 'lost'. Conflict between Casey and her father grows.
When the storeowner is injured in an accident in the back room one day, Casey is the one to find her. Thus Casey faces her biggest struggle of all: she saved the store owner whom she hated, so why couldn't she save her mom whom she loved? Was fate really this cruel?
After a fight with her dad, she ultimately runs to the only person who has slowly accepted and befriended her, the only person who might be able to fill her mother's shoes...the African American neighbor...who at the very end of the story tells Casey..."Of course you can't call me 'mom', call me Pearl."
The last page:
They say a natural pearl doesn't exist without starting as an irritation. Pearl Templeton started that way with me. She's the genuine thing, all right. A true gem. She's the only pearl I will ever want--the only Pearl I will ever love. I can't wait to take her out to our island."
