Letters in the Attic

by Bonnie Shimko

Overview

A crossover young adult-mainstream novel that was published to great acclaim in 2002. This is the first time in paperback. Lizzy McMann, the narrator, is a feisty 12-year-old who moves to a new town with her Mother, recently divorced, and experiences puberty and teenage love, including falling for a 13-year-old girl down the street who is dyslexic, smokes, and looks just like Natalie Wood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897335638
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/21/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	183
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Bonnie Shimko is a former teacher and the author of several novels, including The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye, a 2011 ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Letters in the Attic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award. She lives in Plattsburgh, New York.

Editorial Reviews

A young girl's growing pains include falling for another girl in Bonnie Shimko's Letters in the Attic. In the early 1960s, Lizzy McMann moves from Arizona to upstate New York with her unstable mother after her father runs off with a hatcheck girl. There she meets her grandparents for the first time and strikes up a friendship with Eva, an eighth grader "who looks like Natalie Wood and smokes." Her one-sided attraction to Eva is instant and so are the attendant feelings of shame, confusion and jealousy. Meanwhile, she begins to learn things about her family history that help shed some light on her current circumstances. Lizzie is a charming narrator, a seventh grader hovering between na vet and experience. She notices everything, and while sometimes the details tend to pile up and interfere with the flow of the narrative, there are enough surprises in this appealing story to keep things interesting. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Winning debut describes a young girl coming of age during the 1960s.

Twelve-year-old Lizzy McMann and her mother get a real kick in the head when Veronica’s husband Manny announces that he’s leaving them for a hatcheck girl. To add insult to injury, Manny tells the desk clerk at the Phoenix hotel the McManns have been living in that their room will be vacated the next day, so Lizzy and Veronica must find a new home as well as a new breadwinner. With nowhere else to turn, they move in with Veronica’s parents in upstate New York. There, in her mother’s childhood home, Lizzie discovers a cache of old letters that makes one thing clear: Manny was not her father. While piecing together the mystery of her origins, she manages to settle fairly well into her new surroundings, making friends with Eva Singer, a local physician’s daughter who soon becomes her closest confidante . . . in most things. For, in addition to the usual adolescent traumas of acne and menstruation, Lizzy seems to have suffered the indignity of falling in love with Eva. Is this just another spasm of growing pains, or a glimmer of some new light on her life’s horizon? Whatever the case may be, it is not Lizzy’s only concern. Her mother appears to be on the verge of breaking up with a charming new boyfriend—to go back to Manny! If your own mother can’t manage her life, what hope is there for you? That is how it looks to the teenaged Lizzy, who has yet to learn that most adults spend their lives repeating the mistakes they began as children. "If she were a dog, her ears would be down and her tail would be tucked between her legs," comments the narrator of this amusing tale notable for its sharp and quick-witted tone.

Brisk, fun, and good-natured.

Kirkus Reviews

"Winning debut describes a young girl coming of age during the 1960s... [An] amusing tale notable for its sharp and quick-witted tone. Brisk, fun, and good-natured." — Kirkus Reviews

"... there are enough surprises in this appealing story to keep things interesting." — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher