(Age 10+) What I love about this award winning author for young readers is that she doesn’t talk down to children. She does not spare them the difficult bits of life but presents them in a real and uplifting manner, soul stirring, but focusing on the kinds of things that carry us through hard times, like family and friendship and being challenged in life to courageously keep going when everything seems dismal. I love her perspective and her ability to write literary fiction for children that is captivating for adults as well. There’s hope, humour, and adventure in addition to feeling sadness in your very bones–it’s the stuff of great literature…for kids! Among her award winning novels are books that I own because I want to read them to my grandchildren, often. Among others, books like Because of Winn Dixie (Age 9+) The Tiger Rising (Age 12+), The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Age 7+), and The Magician’s Elephant (Age 8+), and The Tale of Despereaux (Age 9+). Years ago I did a feature post on this author: click here.
DiCamillo introduces us to the ‘Three Rancheros’ in this book. Raymie, Beverly, and Louisiana, three 10 year old girls who meet at a baton lesson and become fast friends. They are:
Raymie: whose Dad left town with a dental hygienist and wants to enter the baton throwing context so that her Dad will see her name in the paper and come back
Beverly: who knows how to pick locks and is incredibly brave, but often has unexplained bruises
Louisiana: whose parents are dead and lives with her eccentric Granny, never has enough to eat, is too poor to have furniture or electricity, and is desperately trying not to end up in the social services county home.
(Age 10+) The story of Louisiana carries on seamlessly in this companion novel to Raymie Nightingale. Granny wakes her up in the middle of the night to tell her that the day of reckoning has arrived and they have to leave immediately. A few weeks ago Louisiana would have accepted this without question, but now she can’t bear to leave her new friends Raymie and Beverly and she’s not sure she will ever return!
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