Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	A Corner of the Universe
	Author:	Martin, Ann M.
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Real Life
	Grade Level:	5 -78
	Booktalker:	Bonnie Phinney
	Awards:	Former Blue Spruce Award Nominee

Booktalk:
Hattie Owen is sitting alone in her parlor, all the reels of film spread out in front of her. She begins to remember – 1951 is one of her favorite reels; her third birthday party is on it. Now she picks up the reel from last summer, the summer she turned twelve, the summer her Uncle Adam came into her life. Sitting in the dark, she begins to cry. The home movies are great, but they don’t begin to tell the story of the summer. What’s left out is more important than what’s there. And the parts her dad left out are what changed her life forever. Uncle Adam. Hattie didn’t even know he existed, until that summer. Oddly, no one in her family had ever mentioned him. Adam, it turns out, has been away at a school for the mentally disabled, and now that his school has closed, he has returned home to live with Nana and Papa. Although she finds his unusual behavior curious, Hattie, who has only one friend, forms a bond with Adam. As they share secrets with each other, Hattie begins to wonder if she and Adam are kindred spirits. Other family members are less accepting of Adam's behavior. Nana is a perfectionist and finds Adam to be an embarrassment to her place of honor in their small town. Even Hattie's own parents sometimes act as if Adam should not be included. But, Hattie sees beneath the surface and finds that Adam has something to teach each of them. For Hattie, her twelfth summer is a time of enlightenment and maturity. With Adam, she’s a bit of a rebel, but that allows her to lift up "a corner of the universe" and see the world from another point of view.