Customer Reviews

Destiny's Gift

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Destiny loves the small bookstore in her town. She also finds a great friend in the owner of the bookstore. She lets Destiny's help her in the store and they often read together. One day when Destiny goes to the store the owner Mrs. Wade is sad. She tells Destiny that the store might have to close because the store doesn't make enough money to pay the rent. Join Destiny and her whole neighborhood as they try to save the store!

The book left you in suspense. It didn't tell you if enough money was rasied to keep the store open.

I would recommend this to students who are learning more about communities. This is a great example of a community pulling together to save something important to them.

"Destiny's Gift" is a lovely pastel collage-illustrated book about an African American girl's reaction to the threatened closing of her favorite bookstore, Mrs. Wade's Bookstore. Destiny loves to learn new words from the dictionary with Mrs. Wade, and to help with little upkeep chores on Saturdays. To Destiny, words and books are like candy; she wants to gobble up more and more and learn as much as she can so she can be a writer some day. When Destiny learns that gentle Mrs. Wade may have to close the bookstore because the landlord has raised the rent and she doesn't have enough customers business to pay the increase, she takes action. A neighborhood block party to benefit the bookstore is organized. Destiny also decides she will create a special gift for Mrs. Wade, a book titled Mrs. Wade's Bookstore that tells all the special feelings and experiences Destiny associates with the kind and learned Mrs. Wade. Although the ending is uncertain, "Destiny's Gift" has a specially poignant message of empowerment for girls and women of color.

Destiny enjoyed writing and reading. She constantly carried around a notebook for jotting down her thoughts, and she gobbled up words from the books she read as if they were candy. Her love of the written word led Destiny to spend a great deal of time at Mrs. Wade's bookstore, browsing through books, meeting some of the authors, and helping Mrs. Wade around the store.

When Mrs. Wade told her one day that the rent had gone up and the store might have to close, Destiny became determined to mobilize the community and drum up new business. Would it be enough to keep the store from closing? With its bold cut-paper collage illustrations, this book provides young readers with a compelling account of some of the intrinsic benefits of small-scale booksellers and the difficulties that owners may have in sustaining their operations.