Summer of the Gypsy Moths [Hardcover]

Sara Pennypacker (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 2012 | Age Range: 8 and up | Lexile Measure: 670L (What's this?)

From Clementine author Sara Pennypacker, this is a poignant middle-grade novel about two foster children who must find a way to work together in order to survive.

Eleven-year-old Stella misses her (unreliable) mom, but she loves it at great-aunt Louise’s house. Louise lives on Cape Cod, where Stella hopes her mom will someday come and settle down. The only problem? Angel, the foster kid Louise has taken in. The two girls live together but there’s no way they’ll ever be friends.

Then Louise suddenly passes away one morning—and Stella and Angel decide not to tell anyone. Now they have to depend on each other for survival. Now they are forced to trust each other with the biggest secret ever.

With great empathy and humor, Sara Pennypacker tells the story of two very different girls who unexpectedly become each other’s true family.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A suspenseful, surprising novel of friendship and family from the creator of the popular Clementine series.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

“Beautifully evoked, the novel’s Cape Cod setting plays a focal role in this richly layered tale of loss, resiliency, and belonging.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))

“Pennypacker is a Beverly Cleary-caliber girl-whisperer; she can weave a yarn both funny and touching, with all the beloved, timeworn themes at the ready: friendship, family, loyalty, loss and independence.” (New York Times Book Review)

“Pennypacker’s marvelously tactile writing animates Stella’s narration and brings both engaging, resilient, and resourceful characters to life.” (School Library Journal)

From the Back Cover

Stella loves living with Great-aunt Louise in her big old house near the water on Cape Cod for many reasons, but mostly because Louise likes routine as much as she does, something Stella appreciates since her mom is, well, kind of unreliable. So while Mom "finds herself," Stella fantasizes that someday she'll come back to the Cape and settle down. The only obstacle to her plan? Angel, the foster kid Louise has taken in. Angel couldn't be less like her name—she's tough and prickly, and the girls hardly speak to each other.

But when tragedy unexpectedly strikes, Stella and Angel are forced to rely on each other to survive, and they learn that they are stronger together than they could have imagined. And over the course of the summer they discover the one thing they do have in common: dreams of finally belonging to a real family.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Balzer + Bray; First Edition edition (April 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061964204
• ISBN-13: 978-0061964206
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "See, broken things always have a story, don't they?" July 10, 2012

By E. R. Bird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Spoiler Alert - I am giving away every little detail about this book in this review. You have been warned.

As a librarian I'm always on the lookout for good middle grade books I can booktalk to kids. Often you don't need an exciting cover or title to sell a book to kids. Heck, sometimes you don't even need to show the book at all. Yet in the case of Sara Pennypacker's debut middle grade novel "Summer of the Gypsy Moths" I fully intend to show the cover off. There you see two happy girls on a seashore on a beautiful summer's day. What could be more idyllic? I'll show the kids the cover then start right off with, "Doesn't it look sweet? Yeah. So this is a book about two girls who bury a corpse in their backyard by themselves and don't tell anyone about it." BLAMMO! Instant interest. Never mind that the book really is a heartfelt and meaningful story or that the writing is some of the finest you will encounter this year. Dead bodies = interested readers, and if I have to sell it with a tawdry pitch then I am bloody selling it with a tawdry pitch and the devil take the details. Shh! Don't tell them it's of outstanding literary quality as well!

Convinced that her free floating mother will return to her someday soon, Stella lives with her Great-aunt Louise and Louise's foster kid Angel. The situation is tenable if not entirely comfortable. If Stella is neat to the point of fault then Angel's her 180-degree opposite. They're like oil and water, those two. That's why when Louise ups and dies on the girls they're surprised to find themselves reluctant allies in a kind of crazy scheme. Neither one of them wants to get caught up in the foster care system so maybe that's why they end up burying Louise in the backyard, running her summer cottages like nothing's wrong.... They can't keep it up forever, but in the process of working together the two find themselves growing closer, coming to understand where they're both coming from.

I always knew Pennypacker could write, of course. She cut her teeth on the early chapter book market ("Clementine", etc.), which, besides easy books, can often be the most difficult books to write for children. The woman really mastered the form, managing with as few words as possible to drive home some concrete emotions and feelings. In "Summer of the Gypsy Moths" she ups the ante, so to speak. Now that she has far more space to play with, Pennypacker takes her time. She draws Stella and Angel into a realistically caring relationship with one another that overcomes their earlier animosity. By the end of the story you understand that they really do like one another, differences of opinion and personality aside.

Then there's the writing itself. First and foremost, Pennypacker knows how to write some stellar lines. Things like, "Angel stared at me, looking like she was caught between snarling and fainting." She's also ample with the humor, as when Stella goes to school after the incident and reports, "Nobody seemed to notice the big sign I felt sure I wore, the one that flashed, ASK ME ABOUT MY WEEKEND!" Later she runs into the school librarian who always seems to be able to read her mind. "I know it sounds crazy, but I wouldn't have been surprised if Ms. Richardson had handed me a book about kids burying people in their backyards." Humor is so hard and Pennypacker is incredibly gifted in her pitch perfect, sparing use of it. Finally, I always like to sit back and watch an author make "the novel's point", so to speak. There's usually some moment when somebody sort of says the point, whether directly or indirectly. If you were watching a musical, it would be the show's big number. In this particular case it comes from the lips of George, the friend of Great-aunt Louise, who helps the girls out with the cabins. At one point he breaks apart a sand dollar for Stella and shows her how the little pieces inside of it look like doves. Says he, "Now, I see a broken shell and I remind myself that something might have needed setting free. See, broken things always have a story, don't they?" By the way, extra points to the author for making the moment between George and Stella honestly engaging and touching where, in less skilled hands, his interest could easily be misinterpreted as creepy.

Another part of the reason the novel works as well as it does is that Pennypacker is capable of walking some very tricky tightropes. For example, if you're writing a book where a sympathetic adult character dies near the beginning, you need to get the audience to care for that person . . . but not too much. Kids already have this innate sense that they are immortal and adults over the age of 30 are liable to die of old age at a drop of a hat. Had Pennypacker made the mistake of making Great-aunt Louise too loveable and snuggly, she would have risked diverting the narrative for those kids who were grief stricken at her demise. On the other hand, make the woman too distant and cold and who the heck cares if she kicks it? The solution is to rely on kids' cold-hearted assumptions that old people die all the time while still making the woman warm enough so that we feel at least a twinge of regret that she's gone.

But let's face it. The real test is the dead body. Because kids moving dead bodies and burying them is almost impossible to pull off in a serious novel. A funny book? Easy as pie. But when you've got a book like this one with a cover and title that indicates something a little more Penderwickish (I claim this term in the name of librarianship!) than including a sequence of two kids moving a days old corpse, that requires a certain amount of finesse. I spent the beginning of the book (already aware of the premise) waiting to see how Pennypacker would handle the situation. I won't spoil it for you, but she really does make it work. Sometimes it's all about tone.

There were little nitpicky things that didn't quite work for me in the book, of course. For example, Stella spends quite a lot of the book getting advice on the care of the house from "Heloise" but it takes us a good 154 pages or so before this essential plot element gets any kind of an explanation. The ending also seemed a bit pat. Seems to me if anyone in the press found out that two twelve-year-old girls had buried their guardian for an extended amount of time that could reach national news-type attention. Here the girls don't even really get a slap on the wrist. More a light poke on the knuckle. I didn't quite buy it. Finally, there are moments when the book totters over the line from folksy and poignant (See: the sand dollar sequence) into cutesy. Having an old guy explain what "a finest-kind day" is sort of veers the book in the wrong direction. Fortunately it's momentary and everything falls back into place very quickly after that.

There isn't much like this book out there, but reading it I had a definite sense that it would pair particularly well with Suzanne LaFleur's "Love, Aubrey" from a couple years ago. Like this book, that one did a good job of beginning with a very dark and potentially scary situation, carefully moving into safer territory and the (for lack of a better term) healing power of friendship. And it's awesome. Just awesome. Pennypacker has clearly been holding out on us all these years. If this is how she begins with longer chapter book fiction then I can only imagine how she will proceed. A truly remarkable debut from the fingertips of a pro.

For ages 9-12. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Memorable middle grade read June 20, 2012

By Liviania VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Stella lives with her Great-aunt Louise in Cape Cod because her mother lost custody. Also living with Louise is Angel, a foster child who wants nothing to do with Stella. Then Louise dies and the girls have to decide: do they call the cops and go back into the system or try to survive on their own?

There's a real strain of darkness running through SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS. Some of the darkness is blatant, but some implications will be glossed over by less mature readers. Stella and Angel have not had easy lives. While neither girl was physically or sexually abused, there are still reasons they would choose not to go to foster care. Stella was neglected by her mother and at eleven is very experienced at fending for herself. And as Stella notes in the text, the two girls get rather dirty and starved as the weeks go by and none of the adults notice.

In my opinion, the darkness works. SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS reminds me of some of my favorite books as a child, including The Pinballs (Apple Paperbacks) and The Boxcar Children (The Boxcar Children, No. 1) (Boxcar Children Mysteries). (And by THE BOXCAR CHILDREN I mean the first book, not the series of mysteries that follows. I like the mysteries, but they have little to nothing in common with SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS.)

Stella and Angel bond as their deception deepens and they do Louise's work as the manager of Linger Longer, a set of four vacation homes. Stella is obsessed with Hints from Heloise, which is both sad and funny in turns.... I've been laughing and learning from Heloise's columns for years, but I think this part might put kids off more than the dead and absentee parents. Angel likes to listen to her mother's fado record. Her mother sang the Portuguese music before her death and Angel uses it to remember her loss and her destiny. She'll have a home as soon as her immigrating aunt finds and job and a house in the United States. Music, chores, and more bring the two girls together.

I expect SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS will be a popular read. Stella and Angel are easy to empathize with and their adventures may not always be exciting, but they're interesting to read about. SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS is one of those quiet stories that gets under your skin. It also makes me happy that I've been giving more middle grade books a chance lately. Read more ›

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Spoiler? Or just a plot device? June 21, 2012

By Dienne TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I suppose I should start this review with a big old ***SPOILER ALERT*** because it's really impossible to say much of anything meaningful about the book without mentioning the big "secret". But it's really not a suspenseful surprise built up throughout the book and which would spoil the pleasure of the book if known in advance. Really, it's just a down-and-dirty plot device so that Ms. Pennypacker can tell the story she really wants to tell: the story of two troubled girls struggling to make it on their own. So anyway, last warning. If you've read this far and haven't turned back, here's what you'll find out by the third chapter anyway: Great Aunt Louise dies.

As part of any believable plot, that twist fails mightily. Pretty much everything related to Louise's death is so completely unrealistic and unbelievable that it's almost hard to take the book seriously. There is simply no way that a woman with two foster daughters, a job and a lifelong community could pass away and no one would know. The girls' attempt to cover up Louise's death are so phony and ridiculous that we might almost think we've gotten lost in some bad 1980s sitcom and we're watching a couple of kids trying to hide Mom's favorite vase that got broken.

For instance, the girls - Stella and Angel - decide that they should bury Louse in her beloved garden. But they have to bury her deep lest the animals dig her up. So there they are in broad daylight digging a hole just long and wide enough for a body. They've gotten about a foot down when George, the man who runs the cottage that Louise is supposed to be managing, shows up. The girls tell him they're planting pumpkins. Right.... Like George would really be dumb enough to believe that the girls think that pumpkinseeds need to be buried a foot deep in a trench. And he hasn't seen or heard from Louise in a few days. Yet he doesn't connect anything. Even when George points out that pumpkins should get planted in mounds, the girls go on digging their trench. Now, George is supposed to be a kind-hearted, trusting and rather naďve man, but this really goes beyond the pale.

But if you set aside Louise's death as a simple plot device, the rest of the story is actually rather touching and engaging. And, in this light, Louise's death and the ridiculousness of the cover-up at times lends some much needed and admittedly rather clever humor to a story that could otherwise have easily gotten bogged down with serious issues.

Both Stella and Angel are basically motherless waifs who have landed on Louise's doorstep because all their other relatives are either dead or not currently suitable. Other than their mutual predicament, however, they have nothing in common. Or so they think. Stella is an eager-to-please workaholic who believes that if she could just be a little more perfect her mother couldn't help but want to be with her. Angel is a world-weary cynic who loses herself in her music and doesn't have much use for Stella's rules or domestic order.

But they find common cause in managing the Linger Longer Cottages in Louise's absence; Stella because she feels like she belongs here at her Aunt's house and maybe she can convince her mother to come if she can just make a home; Angel because she needs the tip money to get to her Portuguese immigrant aunt in New York. With the help of Hints from Heloise and a good deal of perseverance, the girls discover that maybe they do have some things in common. Maybe they could even be friends. And maybe Stella will even figure out how to take care of Louise's blueberry bushes like she promised.

Despite the serious subject matter, this is basically just a light-hearted, feel-good story. Other than the big one on page 18, there are no major surprises. While there are the inevitable rough patches along the way, the tidy resolution is predictable and appropriate. Stella and Angel are both understandable and engaging characters. Stella is immediately sympathetic, while Angel has to grow on you a bit. Gentle George is also a decent, if rather blind, kind of man, and even Louise gains a bit of life, if you will, despite her start as a throw-away character.

I enjoyed the book and I think it will appeal to its target audience. Be prepared to suspend a great deal of disbelief, but overall it's a worthwhile and engaging summer read. 3.5 stars. Read more ›