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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | YA Fic Dooley, S. 2011 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Dooley, S. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | TEEN FICTION Dooley, S. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Twelve-year-old Ember's trailer home has been burned in a fire set most likely by her best friend, a boy whose father believes Ember's family are witches. Yes, Ember's mom reads Tarot cards as a business. Ember's friend set the fire to warn the family before his dad did something worse to them. The friend never intended to do so much damage.
Now the family is homeless, and living in a campground. They have no money. Ember's beloved dog is missing. School is going to start, and Ember and her sister have no clean clothes, no notebooks. The only place Ember feels at peace is floating in the middle of the lake at the campground. She has to make a fresh start. Can she?
Author Notes
Sarah Dooley graduated from Marshall University in 2006. She was a special education teacher who now provides treatment to children with autism. She is the winner of the 2012 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship. She has written several books including Body of Water, Livvie Owen Lived Here, and Free Verse.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9-Sarah Dooley spins a beautiful and bittersweet tale (Feiwel & Friends, 2011) of healing, hope, and self-acceptance. On the night her Wiccan family would have celebrated the Summer Solstice, Ember, 12, loses her home-and possibly her beloved dog-in a fire set by Anson, the boy she thought was her best friend. Having no one to turn to, Ember's family relocates to Goose Landing Campground where Ember, fearful that her family's beliefs will bring further hateful attacks, goes to great lengths to avoid making friends. She even pulls away from her well-meaning parents and optimistic younger sister. The only thing Ember looks forward to is her weekly trip to the site of the fire, where she sifts through the ashes and plots revenge against Anson. It's a long road, but slowly Ember lets down her guard and learns to forgive. In doing so, she discovers that home isn't defined by a physical place or by one's possessions. Rather, home is having people she cares about-and who care about her-nearby. Although certain aspects of the ending are left open-ended, listeners will be satisfied with the conclusion of Ember's journal, which is actually a new beginning. The novel's believable, well-drawn characters are brought to brilliant life by narrator Erin Moon. Overlong pauses between tracks are somewhat distracting but don't impact this terrific story with an important message.-Alissa LeMerise, Oxford Public Library, MI (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Twelve-year-old Ember's losses--material and emotional--are poignantly portrayed in this tale of a family victimized by arson, probably because they practice Wicca. Ember's relationships with her siblings and her desperation to keep the family's homelessness a secret as they spend their summer living in a vacation campground are utterly convincing. Dooley's balance between the pain of poverty and the pull of hope is exquisite. (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
(Fiction. 10-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
After a fire destroys their trailer, 12-year-old Ember and her family find themselves in tents at the Goose Landing campground. With no work and a grandmother who refuses to help them because they are atheists, the family lives on the little they can scavenge. Ember struggles with heartaches that range from her embarrassment over her clothing (ugly yellow sweatpants) to the knowledge that the fire was started by her best friend, Anson. Consequently, she refuses to befriend anyone at the campground, believing that she will only be hurt further, and she finds peace alone, floating quietly in the lake. Well written and authentic, this title is both a painful portrait of homelessness and the toll it takes on families, as well as a character study of extraordinarily good people who love each other and find small ways to survive with dignity and courage. Filled with frank details of the hardships Ember and her family face, Body of Water avoids preachiness as it offers messages about tolerance and understanding.--Bradburn, Frances Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
FOR every hyperscheduled, extracurricular-activitied, turbo-texting, iPad-gaming middle schooler in America, there are those we don't hear about: the children whose parents dread the annual school supply list because they can't afford colored pencils and three-ring binders. The children who rely on their public school cafeteria for a free breakfast. The children who don't worry if they're wearing the right American Eagle top, because they're clinging to the few shirts they have. Sarah Dooley's subdued, thoughtful novels for middle-grade readers are set in this hidden world. Her Southeastern families live on the poverty line, always looking for a stable place to land. They're not the kinds of people who've suddenly fallen on hard times; for her characters, money has always been tight, giving them a matter-of-fact, unapologetic, that's-just-how-things-are approach to being poor that eradicates any whiff of a reader's pity. In Dooley's moving debut, "Livvie Owen Lived Here," 14-year-old Livvie's autistic outbursts keep her parents from staying in the good graces of nosy neighbors and angry landlords and finding a permanent home; "Body of Water," similarly grapples with what makes a real home and a solid community. One in 50 American children are homeless, the National Center on Family Homelessness reported in 2009; Ember, the 12-year-old protagonist in "Body of Water," is one of them. And as with many homeless families, her parents' slide into serious poverty occurs as an unstoppable chain reaction: after their trailer burns down - a fire Ember is convinced was started by her (former) best friend, Anson - Ember's family is forced to relocate, using a $50 gift from Grandma to buy tents. The flames swallowed everything they own: their car; their papers; the makings of the family tailoring business; their clothing. Ember's parents, nomads by choice before settling in the trailer for the children's benefit, try to make their accidental vacation a challenging adventure, joking that their campsite has "all the comforts of home," feigning excitement about another meal of hot dogs, and playing miniature golf with the other children in the campground. They scrape together the $5-a-day camping fee through chopping firewood and selling the blackberries that grow near the lake. But they can't live in tents forever: sooner or later, they'll have to figure out how to find four solid walls, and a bathroom that's not shared with strangers. When Dooley writes about the realities of poverty and homelessness - the big night out at Dairy Queen, in which Ember realizes how carefully her parents are choosing their menu items so as not to disturb the delicate balance of their meager finances; the meals of cheese crackers and bologna roasted over a fire; the panic when some campground acquaintances include Ember in a fast-food run that she can't afford - "Body of Water" works quite well. Dooley is especially convincing on the subtle ways in which the trauma hardens Ember; after Anson's betrayal, she steers clear of the campground children who might potentially befriend her. "I still felt like I was walking through sand, supping and sliding on shifting earth that I used stupidly to think would stay solid forever," Ember says about her hesitation in bonding with another girl. How can you let someone new in when your world is so unstable? Dooley isn't as skilled with another crucial aspect of Ember's family: the fact that they're Wiccan in an intensely Christian community. Ember's mother reads tarot cards and wears a tattoo of runes around her ankle; the family's deeply held Pagan beliefs ("our nature-based religion," Ember calls it) and their spells and ritual practices permeate the book. Their paganism is why the one family member who is able to help them after the fire - Ember's paternal Christian grandmother - refuses to offer assistance beyond her meager $50 gift, and could possibly have been the cause of the fire itself: Ember believes Anson set the fire after his parents discovered a borrowed deck of Ember's tarot cards. IT all goes down like melodramatic medicine, as if Dooley wants to offer both a teachable moment about religious acceptance and a primer on paganism, or had been listening to the folk singer Dar Williams's 1996 song "The Christians and the Pagans" on repeat while writing the book. The novel's climax includes a reconciliatory scene in which Ember's spells and her new Christian friends' prayers work side by side to bind them together in a time of trouble. Much of our knowledge about the family's beliefs comes through letters Ember writes to Anson on the back of campground maps and Taco Bell wrappers to assuage his assumed fears about her religion; these feel especially forced and inorganic. Even with the Wiccan overkill, though, the book's lessons - the ability of family to persevere through hard times, the importance of not giving up hope - are worthy ones, and Dooley gives voice to an often overlooked group of children. Here's hoping this quiet story will be heard over the constant pinging of potential readers' iPhones. Whitney Joiner is collaborating on "The Drama Years," a guide for parents of middle-school girls.