After succumbing to peer pressure from a bully, an unusual friendship between Garmann and the Stamp Man arises out of a near-disaster.
Garmann’s Street
Realistic Fiction
Realistic Fiction genre
How To Make a Bird
It’s dawn, on an empty road in the countryside. Empty, except for the girl in the long, red evening gown, standing next to a bicycle, and looking back at the home she’s about to leave. Mannie’s ready to start a new life and forget the terrible things that have happened here, but there are questions that need to be answered before she can let go. Questions about her elegant but unstable mother, her brother who’s always overshadowed her, and his friend Harry Jacob, who just might be Mannie’s boyfriend. And her only clue is an unfamiliar address in Melbourne, written on a scrap of paper found in her brother’s room. As she makes her journey to the city, the mystery of this vulnerable, quirky girl is revealed piece by piece in her search for a way to become whole again. With rare sensitivity and a poetic voice that is unmistakably her own, Martine Murray tells a story about growing up and listening to your heart.
I Know Here
The little girl in this story lives in a trailer near a forest where her father is building a dam. Everything in her world is familiar and precious to her. But the family is moving to the city, which the little girl knows only as a place marked by a big red star on the map at school. The teacher suggests that she draw something that she wants to remember to take away with her when she leaves, and the little girl decides to draw what she knows — her road and everything her world contains — so that she can keep it with her always.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2
Departure Time
Departure Time is the amazing journey of a girl in two stories. The girl in the hotel with the fox and the rat, and the girl whose father travels a lot, who suggests they write a story together, a story about talking animals. She doe sn’t wan to. She is angry with him, because he can’t make it home in time for her birthday.
The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy
An alcoholic mother, a distracted father, a best friend who spends all his time with his new “girlfriend,” and three relentless schoolyard bullies: Prinny Murphy’s past, present, and future certainly are “tense.” Adding to her misery, she still can’t read well enough to escape from remedial lessons with the dour Mrs. Dooks. But when a kindly substitute teacher introduces her to LaVaughn’s inner-city world in the free verse novel, Make Lemonade, Prinny discovers that life can be full of possibilities – and poetry.
A Small Free Kiss in the Dark
Skip, an eleven-year-old runaway, becomes friends with Billy, a homeless man, and together they flee a war-torn Australian city with six-year-old Max and camp out at a seaside amusement park, where they are joined by Tia, a fifteen-year-old ballerina, and her baby.
Darius Bell and the Glitter Pool
The Bell family’s ancestors were showered with honors, gifts and grants of land. In exchange, they have bestowed a Gift, once every 25 years, on the town. The Gifts have ranged from a statue to a bell tower with stained-glass windows, but now it is Darius’s father’s turn – and there is no money for an impressive gift. It looks as though a wheelbarrow full of vegetables is the best they can do. Darius is determined to preserve the family honor, and when an earthquake reveals something glorious, he thinks he’s found the answer.
You Can Pick Me Up At Peggy’s Cove
Ryan’s dad is having a midlife crisis. He went away for the summer to try to work through his problems, leaving his family behind. Ryan’s mother decides to send Ryan to Peggy’s Cove, the most beautiful cove in the world, for the summer to stay with his Aunt Fay, who owns and operates a store there. Peggy’s Cove is all right, Ryan thinks, if it weren’t so small and crowded with tourists.
Still, he manages to make friends. First, he befriends Drummer, a misfit. But hanging out with Drummer proves disastrous because it makes him behave in ways he never has before and gets him into trouble. Next, he finds friendship with fishermen Eddie and Wing Ding, who teach him how to fish. The time he spends with the two fishermen is the best moments of his visit. Even so, he still thinks of his father a lot and writes him a letter in hopes of getting his attention. After spending a summer apart, will their relationship ever be the same?
Northward To The Moon
Jane and her family have moved to Canada . . . but not for long. When her stepfather, Ned, is fired from his job as a high school French teacher (seems he doesn’t speak French), the family packs up and Jane embarks on a series of new adventures. At first, she imagines her family as a gang of outlaws, riding on horseback in masks, robbing trains, and traveling all the way to Mexico. But the reality is different: Setting off by car, they visit the tribe of Native Americans with whom Ned once lived, head to Las Vegas in search of Ned’s magician brother, and wind up spending the summer with his eccentric mother on her ranch out west. As Jane lives through it all–developing a crush on a ranch hand, reevaluating her relationship with Ned, watching her sister Maya’s painful growing up–she sees her world, which used to be so safe and secure, shift in strange and inconvenient ways.
Because of Mr. Terupt
It’s the start of fifth grade for seven kids at Snow Hill School. There’s . . . Jessica, the new girl, smart and perceptive, who’s having a hard time fitting in; Alexia, a bully, your friend one second, your enemy the next; Peter, class prankster and troublemaker; Luke, the brain; Danielle, who never stands up for herself; shy Anna, whose home situation makes her an outcast; and Jeffrey, who hates school. Only Mr. Terupt, their new and energetic teacher, seems to know how to deal with them all. He makes the classroom a fun place, even if he doesn’t let them get away with much . . . until the snowy winter day when an accident changes everything—and everyone.