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Printer Friendly
Booktalking Colorado Full Record:
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Title: |
A Corner of the Universe |
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Author: |
Martin, Ann |
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Date Published: |
2002 |
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Genre: |
Real Life |
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Grade Level: |
6 - 8 |
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Booktalker: |
Cindy Fiegenbaum |
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Awards: |
Former Blue Spruce Award Nominee |
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Booktalk:
On the eve of her twelfth birthday, Hattie Owen has never met her
Uncle Adam. In fact, she does not even know he exists. Hattie helps her mother and artist father run a boarding house in a small town. She likes a life of routine and dinner with the boarders whom she has known most of her life. It is a summer in which Hattie and her family never take a vacation that will change her life forever.
Her grandparents, Nana and Papa, disapprove of the boarding house, which they consider beneath their dignity. Nana only understands her own social place as a doctor's wife, in the society of their town.
When Hattie's Uncle Adam arrives in their small town, Hattie finds his unusual behavior curious. Adam has been at a school for the mentally disabled. Not one of her family members has ever mentioned Adam, and now that his school has closed, he has returned home to live. 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, for she can sometimes anticipate what he is going to do.
Other family members are less accepting of Adam's behaviors.
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 finds that Adam has something to teach each of them. For Hattie, this is a summer of enlightenment and maturity. She is a little bit of a rebel, but that allows her to lift up "a corner of the universe" and see the world from another view point.
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