Customer Reviews

Tending to Grace

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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" 'Come on, Corns,' my mother says, opening the car door for me. 'Bring your stuff.' The boyfriend shrugs and turns up the radio.
"I wonder when a Girl Scout last sold cookies here. Not for a while, apparently, because the hem on my dress catches the grass as we trek to the front door.
"It's not going to be for that long, Corns. Just till Joe and me get settled.' My mother pushes some of the ivy aside and taps at the door. The skin on her hand is thin, translucent, like china held up to the light. I can hardly hear her knocks.
"I watch another bird fly across the yard and land on the roof and then an old woman walks around from the back of the house. She is tall and straight, pale as vanilla pudding, with gray hair twisted into a braid and roped around her head. Binoculars thump against her chest. My mother jumps a little when she sees her. 'Agatha.'
" 'Tell him to turn that noise off.' The old woman nods to the car, but her eyes are on me.
"My mother looks unsure about what she should do. She takes a few steps forward (is she thinking of hugging the old woman?), then changes her mind and turns toward the car, leaving me standing with my crate of books at my feet.
"I hold my breath and hope the old woman doesn't talk. I watch another bird fly to the chimney. The boyfriend turns the radio down. 'Your phone isn't working,' my mother says when she walks back to us. Then she giggles in her nervous little way that's nails on a blackboard to me. 'I need someone to take her for a while.' "

There are a bunch of memorable (and award-winning) stories that feature adolescent girls going to live with grandmothers or grandmother-types. Consider such pairings as Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel, Dicey and Abigail Tillerman, Hollis Woods and Josie Cahill, and, in 2003, Ratchet Clark and those wacky twin nonagenarians Tilly and Penpen Menuto. Add TENDING TO GRACE to the cream of this intergenerational YA crop.

"I am a bookworm, a bibliophile, a passionate lover of books. I know metaphor and active voice and poetic meter, and I understand that the difference between the right word and the almost right word, as Samuel Clemens said, is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
"But I don't talk, so no one knows. All they see are the days I miss school, thirty-five one year, twenty-seven the next, forty-two the year after that. I am a silent red flag, waving to them, and they send me to their counselors and they ask me, 'When are you going to talk about it, Cornelia?' I wrap myself into a ball and squish the feelings down to my toes and they don't know what to make of me so they send me back to this class where we get the watered-down TOM SAWYER with pages stripped of soul and sentences as straight and flat as a train track. "We read that the new boy in TOM SAWYER ran like a deer, while the kids in the honors class read he 'turned tail and ran like an antelope.'
"I know, because I read that book too."

Cornelia Thornhill refuses to speak. If she were willing to speak up she would undoubtedly be part of that honors English class. And while she has faced more than her share of tramatic experiences, her silence is due to a speech impediment--her severe stuttering. (Her schoolmates have long laughed at her expense about it.) As the story begins, she is in ninth grade. But she is forced to forgo the remainder of the school year when her mother and the boyfriend impulsively decide to hit the road and ditch her at her great-Aunt Agatha's while they head off to the greener pastures of Vegas. Agatha's grungy old farmhouse, unusual diet, other various idiosyncracies, and determination that Cornelia must learn to speak for herself provide a testing ground for Cornelia and her silence.

"I brace myself for advice, like everyone gives, especially my mother: Try harder, Corns, for goodness' sake. I know you could talk regular if you just pull yourself together. Just pick easier words.

"Or the fifth grade teacher, helpful as hail: Take a breath, Cornelia, slow down, relax, think about what you want to say before you say it. You just need more backbone, that's all.
"They make it sound so easy. Try harder, stutter less. But when I try harder, I stutter more. When I pick easier words, I stutter on easier words. And I can't pick an easier word when someone asks me my name."

Speaking of names, Agatha's naming her tipsy outhouse "Esther" and her truck "Bertha," brings back fond memories of that lovely Cynthia Rylant/Kathryn Brown picture book, THE OLD WOMAN WHO NAMED THINGS.

And like the old woman in that story, Agatha has a thing or two to learn herself.

Kimberly Newton Fusco's fine (as in china) use of language makes this book a pleasure to read and to read aloud. An engaging balance between fiddleheads, bullies, and longings for an imperfect and absent mother make TENDING TO GRACE an exceptional middle school read.

This is the story of a young girl whose only control of her world is her silence. She has no father; her mother is the typical self-centered abusive by neglect example. Cornelia's only pleasure in life is her books.

Cornelia's world is suddenly jolted as her mother physically abandons Corny to a distant relative. Agatha is the opposite of Corny in so many ways; dirty, disorganized, nature lover. Yet, she is just as independent as Corny.

The story is the characters coming to need each other, and help each other, and grow in ways they couldn't expect. Corny eventually breaks her shell and stands for herself, at the same time as learning to lean on Agatha.

It's really a beautiful story for a young girl who might find herself frustrated by the constriction of her own world. Corny is an unusual hero, but she is heroic, none the less.

(*)>

When Cornelia is in ninth grade, her mother leaves her with her Great-Aunt Agatha and takes off with her boyfriend. Cornelia and Agatha are vastly different, with the teenager being a shy bookworm with a stutter and the older woman being a very folksy, country lady. Though it is blood that binds them, it is ultimately literacy that bonds them.

This book is short and sweet, poignant and poetic. It is easy enough for reluctant readers and important enough to discuss with kids and adults alike. As mentioned earlier, it encourages and emphasizes the importance of literacy.

Highly recommended. Well-written characters and powerful themes.

A coming-of-age story has never been so poignant and touching. Cornelia is a flower folding unto itself. She describes herself as "a chrysanthemum, a late bloomer, a fall bloomer, a bloomer nonetheless." Has Cornelia ever been a child? For as long as she can remember, Cornelia has had to take care of her mother. And now her mother is gone to start a new life in Vegas with her boyfriend. Cornelia is dropped off to stay with her kooky great-aunt Agatha who lives in a dirty ramshackle cottage in rural New England. Similar to Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, this is a story of a troubled teen who wants to hide from the world, but who also wants to be a part of it. Is it possible for her to come to terms with loneliness and the stuttering that paralyzes her and compounds her shyness? Still, Cornelia awakens to new experiences and befriends Bo, a sweet free-spirited girl who helps her gain a new positive perspective on her own self and her great-aunt Agatha.

The chapters are short and some are only one page long. The bouncy style is resonant of a teen's journal entries. This book is a dream come true for students with a limited attention span. Fast-paced and fun-to-read, Tending to Grace is beautiful but sometimes predictable. Should teachers and librarians embrace the happy resolution and the protagonist coming to terms with her strengths and weaknesses, and learning to rise above? Is the optimism and inspirational undertone verging on clich?d and overly hackneyed? Still, what teen wouldn't relate with feeling misunderstood and alone? This aside, many teachers and librarians might find that this book is solidly made for an audience of female students; there is a chance that boys will feel slightly removed from this story, as there are few male characters in the book and all are portrayed in a negative light.

I read the book and am reviewing Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco. I gave it 5 stars. The book was amazing. It is about a girl Cornelia who is very shy and doesn't talk because she has a stutter. When her mother and her mother's boyfriend drop her off in the middle of nowhere at a distant aunt's house, Cornelia finds a new friendship with her after a while of them hating each other. This is a compelling story about courage, friendship, and strength. I would recommend it to people in fifth grade and up. It was a wonderful story.

TENDING TO GRACE IS A GOOD BOOK. It starts out driving with a family at the end of May on a silent day. What made me like this story was this line "the boyfirend". You can tell when she says the boyfriend its a problem. She doesn't like him. Carnelia, the main character in the story is about 15 and loves to read and doesn't talk to anybody because she has a speech problem. She doesn't like her mom's boyfriend. One day the boyfriend wants to go to Las Vegas and Mom talks to Carnelia. The next day mom drops her off with her Aunt Agatha. Carnelia, not knowing where she is going, didn't know she was in for a reality check. Moving in and having to deal with the way her aunt lives she really breaks out of her shell. During the process she is missing her mother at the same time. What I thought was good about this story was that it wasn't hard to get into. The author breaks everything down and makes me feel as if i were in the story. If you like stories with troubled teens in need of help, having a breakthrough, this is the book for you! sadequa

When nearing the end of her freshman year in high school, shy Cornelia, who has a stutter, is up-rooted from home by her mother and mother's boyfriend, driven cross country and dropped off with her great-aunt in the Southwest. Aunt Agatha who lives alone in the country and is illiterate, is an unlikely parent, but as Cornelia teaches Agatha to read, Agatha teaches Cornelia to live. This book has an excellent message of hope and can be digested in small chunks. Good for high school/middle school students who think they do not like to read.

I read a book this morning; a wonderful, short, evocative, uplifting book called Tending to Grace. It's a young adult novel, and I have to admit, I love the way so many young adult books are so lyrically written, tightly edited and refreshingly focused. It made a lovely way to center my thoughts at the beginning of the day.

Tending to Grace is written from the point of view of a high school sophomore whose mother leaves for Vegas with the boyfriend, dropping daughter off with an elderly eccentric aunt in the countryside. The short scenes never revel in the young girl's thoughts, simply placing them there to be read on the page. Take it or leave it. This is who she is. But slowly the hard shell round Cornelia begins to crack. And the wounded space at the center of Aunt Agatha's heart breaks open. Lives and futures are changed, while a wooden outhouse surprisingly fails to tip open and the spiders' webs get cleaned.

I love the way Cornelia's story expands to encompass her aunt's, her mother's, the little girl's whose father is out of work, the librarian's, and even the teachers'. I love the way Cornelia's entry into other people's lives through books becomes a door opening to her own. And I love the feel of different worlds colliding when city girl meets country home, when silent rebel begins to confess the delight of reveling in words.

Most of all, I love the way the author pulled me into a young girl's pain, through her shell, into her heart, and showed the space that each of us can make if we open our minds.