Stick With Me
By:
An ice skater without a rink. An artist without a place to draw. Two misfit girls who become unlikely friends over the course of an unusual week. Jennifer Blecher’s nuanced understanding of middle school friendship shines in this voice-driven novel for fans of Laurel Snyder and Jennifer Holm.
Izzy’s best friend seems to be ditching her for the Queen of Mean, Daphne Toll. Izzy wants to fit in and have some real friends, but all she really has are her drawings. And then her family rents their house out during winter break for some extra cash—and that family’s daughter is sleeping in Izzy’s room and attending the same camp!
Wren is focused on perfecting her ice-skating routine after tanking at sectionals last year. But when her sister qualifies for a life-changing treatment for her epilepsy, Wren is carted off to stay in a rented home in Boston. It doesn’t help that she’s forced to attend the local theater camp, where it seems like the mean girls have it out for her.
Jennifer Blecher, the acclaimed author of Out of Place, writes with a pitch-perfect ear for tween girls and the ups and downs of middle school friendships. Told from dual perspectives, Stick with Me is a sensitively drawn story about fitting in and figuring yourself out. Readers of Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Rebecca Stead, and Lisa Graff will find characters they can relate to.
ISBN: 9780062748621
JLG Release: Feb 2021
Sensitive Areas:
Language: Infrequent Use Language: Mild Language
Topics:
Best friends
, Friendship
, Theater camp
, Ice skating
, Family life
, Sisters
, Epilepsy
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Praise & Reviews
Starred or favorable reviews have been received from these periodicals:
Horn Book
The lives of two twelve-year-olds intersect for a brief time, with long-lasting positive effects. In suburban Boston, Izzy is struggling with her former best friend’s defection to the mean girl crowd. In New Hampshire, Wren is preparing for an upcoming figure skating competition. They meet when Izzy’s parents decide to make a little extra money The lives of two twelve-year-olds intersect for a brief time, with long-lasting positive effects. In suburban Boston, Izzy is struggling with her former best friend’s defection to the mean girl crowd. In New Hampshire, Wren is preparing for an upcoming figure skating competition. They meet when Izzy’s parents decide to make a little extra money by renting out their home for school vacation week (they’ll camp out in the apartment over the garage) and Wren’s family moves in so they can be near Wren’s little sister as she undergoes a life-saving operation. The situation is weird and awkward for both girls. They endure a school-vacation-week theater camp, Wren plotting nonstop to find some ice to practice on. Tension builds and an enduring friendship forms as a desperate Wren goes skating on an unsafe pond and Izzy pulls her out of the freezing water (shades of Little Women, the play the theater-camp crew is rehearsing) and as the two girls join forces to upend a social trap the mean girls set for Wren. Blecher (Out of Place, rev. 7/19) creates two authentic tween characters in quiet, artistic Izzy and tough, determined Wren. The family situations are believably portrayed, and the prose, though restrained, nonetheless gets right to the heart of things. “It was an opening, a crack in the door. Izzy could kick the door open and ask her mom what she meant, or leave it closed. Izzy chose closed.” MARTHA V. PARRAVANO
Book Details
ISBN
9780062748621
First Release
February 2021
Genre
Fic
Dewey Classification
F
Trim Size
8 3/10" x 5 1/2"
Page Count
256
Accelerated Reader
N/AScholastic Reading Counts
N/ALexile
N/AFormat
Print Book
Edition
Hardcover edition
Publisher
Greenwillow Bks.
Potentially Sensitive Areas
Language: Infrequent Use Language: Mild Language
Topics
Best friends, Friendship, Theater camp, Ice skating, Family life, Sisters, Epilepsy,
