Title: Bingo Summer
Author: Dawn Malone
Genre: Middle Grade
Publication Date: May 28, 2014
Description (from Goodreads):
On her thirteenth birthday, Summer Haas scratches the lottery ticket her mom tucked into her birthday card and the down-on-their-luck family become instant millionaires. Then the attention gets crazy in their small Illinois town, and the family moves north to ‘disappear’ in the Chicago suburbs. Summer’s new home might as well be on the Moon, it’s so different from where she used to live.
Suddenly, Summer is a candidate for student council, trades her t-shirt and jeans for mall-brand clothes, and throws a party for her entire grade even though she didn’t invite a single guest. Everyone wants Summer to be someone other than herself, including the super-popular Suri who Summer hopes will be her new best friend. There’s Mara who wants Summer to forget about competing with her for third base when softball season comes. And Summer just wants to avoid Dink and Anna even though she has more in common with them than she wants to admit.
But when Mara discovers how Summer’s family made their millions, and threatens to tell the whole school, Summer needs a friend more than ever. Can Summer fit in AND stay true to herself?
Review:
I received a free ecopy of this book for an honest review.
When Summer’s family wins the lottery, everything and everyone in her hometown of Scranton goes crazy. The solution? Summer’s mom tells her and her sister, JC, that they’re moving. They end up in a small town with a lot of wealthy people.
You can’t help but feel sorry for Summer. It’s hard enough to move when you’re in junior high or high school. Everyone has their own friends who they’ve grown up with and it can be difficult for a newcomer to make friends. She also has to deal with a complete change of lifestyle and trying to fit in with a whole different type of people than she’s used to.
Dawn Malone’s writing style flows well and is easy to read. It’s easy to picture the people and places she’s writing about.
Bingo Summer is not only a good story but it emphasizes the importance of accepting ourselves for who we are and that we’re not going to be happy if we try to be someone we’re not. A great example of that is Summer’s mom. She is who she is and she doesn’t apologize to anyone for the way she is.
I definitely recommend Bingo Summer for readers 10 and up.
About the Author:
Dawn Malone is an author and former newspaper reporter. She has written on a wide range of subjects, from a creole cooking school in New Orleans to award-winning irises in a Wisconsin greenhouse. Writing those articles and working other odd jobs over the years – cake assembly line worker, yogurt seller, substitute teacher ? helps her develop the quirky characters that populate her stories. Her work has appeared in theWisconsin State Journal, the Chicken Soup for the Soul Think Positive for Kids edition, and Highlights for Children. When she’s not writing, Dawn loves hiking when someone else carries her backpack. She lives in central Illinois.
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