The Stuff of Remembering

We cling to happy (and not so happy) memories of special places, events and people.  We tuck them into the sacred corners of our mind to inspire and educate us, to rekindle passionate pursuits, and to keep the sparks of love and hope ignited.  Collectively these moments comprise the story of our lives.  They are how we connect to each other.

Many of us, at any age, can be forgetful but when you see an elderly person struggle and search for words during a conversation, you realize how disheartening the loss of memory is for them and for those who love them. Elly Swartz, author of  Finding Perfect (Farrar Straus Giroux, October 18, 2016) and Smart Cookie (Scholastic Press, January 30, 2018) has penned another exceptional middle grade novel about a twelve-year-old girl, Maggie, filled with anxiety and a fear of forgetting.  It is an illuminating look at the power of our minds and the importance of family.



1
Baby Girl
Baby Girl is the name written on her birth certificate,
but I think that's a bit sad.  Mom calls her Isabelle.
That feels way too formal for a silky-soft, chubby
day-old baby who smells like powder.  So I name
her Izzie.

Maggie's family is fostering a newborn until the birth parents reach a decision on the fate of their child.  She, her two brothers, Dillon (older) and Charlie (younger) and her parents have been counseled to keep in mind, this little girl is in their care for only the briefest amount of time.  To Maggie, she's already her very own little sister.  On the first morning of Izzie's stay with the family, we are given a glimmer of Maggie's growing problem.

Chapter by chapter we are more fully acquainted with the members of Maggie's family including their Labrador retriever, Batman.  Dillon is laser-focused on his basketball skills.  Young Charlie spouts trivia like he's practicing for a spot on Jeopardy.  Maggie is one of the best trap-shooters on her all-girl squad which happens to be coached by her father.  Maggie has a huge heart, looking out for those who can't protect themselves, like an eastern painted turtle she rescues from the shooting range.  She takes him home, smuggled in her pocket, and names him Bert.

This family is cemented together by love reflected in the actions of grandparents and parents.  A year ago, Nana, the children's grandmother died.  There was one horrible day when she didn't recognize Maggie anymore.  Dinners begin with a round table of declarations of what made members, happy, sad or mad.  Dinners do sometimes include their grandfather who lives near them.  There is a constant exchange of conversation between siblings and adults with the children.  And yet, amid all this, Maggie is in trouble.

Maggie is full of fear.  She is terrified of forgetting like her grandmother.  To alleviate her fear, she saves everything.  Her bedroom closet is stacked with cardboard boxes and under her bed more boxes hold items tied to memories.  Her locker at school is nearly overflowing.  She has been able to keep this need to save a secret until two episodes of uncontrolled anger, first at Charlie and then her mother, draw her parents attention. 

Amid the trips to the psychologist to create and follow through on a plan for Maggie to re-think her fear of forgetting, everyday life happens all around her.  Changes are made on the all-girls trap squad as the state meet approaches.  A new friendship is formed as a former friendship fades.  Anger rears its ugly head again.  A loss through carelessness sends the family in seek-and-find mode for days.  There is heartbreak and hope in abundance.  When Maggie's faced with a dilemma during the state meet, you'll have to remind yourself to breathe but breathe you will because we all are stronger together.


As soon as you begin reading you are reminded of Elly Swartz's innate ability to take us into the mind of her characters.  This narrative in the first-person of Maggie is a deeply personal blend of thoughts, dialogue and notes in a journal.  Through Maggie's words, silent, spoken or written, we meet a girl with a large capacity for compassion.

So in two days, two weeks, or a month, we'll need to return our little bundle to Rita and the agency.
Like a library book.
But I don't want to tell Charlie that.
Because to me, she feels like my baby sister.
Even if it's for just a few days.

Within the initial story Elly Swartz begins to leave careful clues about Maggie's growing fear; her need to keep items as physical ties to memories.  We feel the start of something building, layer by layer.  It increases until to our dismay, and Maggie's dread, it's out of control.  It's hard to watch this unfold in this twelve-year-old girl's life. 

When Nana died last year, I added a tassel from her favorite pomegranate-red scarf.  And since then, I've added five gum wrappers, three bendy straws, sticks from a hike up Ridge Mountain, Wade Pond, and a walk with Charlie, a yellow plastic fork, half a red, white, and blue plate with a picture of fireworks on it, and a butterscotch candy wrapper.  I've also filled the seven boxes in the closet, the three other under my bed, and most of my school locker.
Today, I drop in one teeny-tiny yellow sock.
A little piece of Izzie. 
For me.
To keep. 

The chapters are short but thoughtfully written.  Chapter headings reveal key moments within those pages.  Each one ends with words you want to remember.  Each one begins with the next moment in Maggie's day to day world.  Here is a passage from the end of a chapter and the beginning of the next chapter.

"I got a call from Rita," Mom says.  "The birth parents have selected an adoptive couple, and I need to bring Isabelle back to Rita's office so they can give her to her forever family."
"When?"
"Saturday."
So now I know.
Forever ends tomorrow.

The panic rises from the place that holds my forever good-byes.
To Nana.
And now, Izzie.
I hug this little human who smells like powder, and a tear slips out.  I don't want to let her go. Don't want to be forgotten.

As she did in her two previous books, Elly Swartz places true-to-life characters addressing tough situations in this title.  She provides us with the opportunity to learn with the people residing in her pages.  We laugh with them, and cry with them.  This is how books leave a mark on our hearts.


Whether you read this book, Give and Take written by Elly Swartz in one sitting or a little at a time, individually, with an entire class as a read aloud or with a book group, you will be moved by the story of Maggie, her family and friends.  At the close of the book Elly Swartz includes Maggie's Playlist, A Note on Hoarding in Children from Dr. Kathleen Trainor, Clinical Psychologist, an author's note, and information on hoarding in children, adoption and short-term foster care and eastern painted turtles.  This book needs to find a place on your professional and personal bookshelves. 

To learn more about Elly Swartz and her other work, please visit her website by following the link attached to her name.  Elly has a page dedicated to this title on her website.  It includes a curriculum guide and a journaling activity.  Elly Swartz has accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.  At the publisher's website you can read an excerpt.  The cover is revealed along with a chat at Scholastic's Ambassador of School Libraries, John Schumacher's site, Watch. Connect. Read.

Sweet Secrets

As an adult losing a parent is crushing.  There is a fresh feeling of emptiness, a feeling of being lost.  For a child it must be overwhelming.  Whether their death is recent or so long ago it's hard to recall anything more than glimpses of cherished memories, there's the sense of not quite being whole.

There are times when this loss is brought sharply into focus.  Smart Cookie (Scholastic Press, January 30, 2018) written by Elly Swartz (Finding Perfect) presents the current quandary of a motherless, eleven-year-old girl.  It's been seven years since her mom was killed in a car accident on a wild, stormy night.  Now she needs a mom as soon as possible.

Headquarters, the Cookies, and the Storm

Sometimes to fix your family, you need to keep a few secrets.  Even when secret keeping is not a thing that happens naturally when you live at the Greene Family B&B.

Francine, affectionately called Frankie, is headed to the basement of the Greene Family B&B for a special Code Red-Hot Chili Peppers meeting with her best buddy, an avid ghost hunter and fan of ghost hunters, Elliot.  With the Winter Family Festival Parade on the horizon, this year due to an upcoming marriage of another student's dad, Frankie will be the only one without a mom.   With a bribe of sorts, a brand new Ghost-Hunter Super-Charged Laser, from Frankie, Elliot agrees to support her in her quest.  With hope in her heart Frankie clicks submit on the profile she wrote for her dad at Connection.com

There is an off-limits shed on Frankie's property housing all of Gram's stuff when she came to live with them and take Frankie's mom's spot.  Oddly enough, walking around it with the laser, the new gadget registers a ten.  Elliot is convinced there's a ghost there.  Is it Frankie's mom, Elliot's grandfather, the ghost of an unsolved local murder victim or has the missing community member met with an untimely demise?

Mystery, tension and humor escalate when some of the townsfolk start to whisper about ghosts at the Greene Family B&B, the Possible women start to show up at the B&B looking and acting nothing like their profiles, a local man, Reggie Hogan, says the B&B should never have been Frankie's family's place and Frankie gets matched with her used-to-be best friend, Jessica, for a Shakespeare project at school.  Elliot hatches a plan, a daring, we're-toast-if-we're caught plan, for possibly solving the ghost, missing community member and the threats of Reggie Hogan dilemmas.  Frankie is trying to work with Jessica but revelations and betrayal cause their efforts to be stop and go and then stop again.

Frankie's dad and her Gram are acting less than normal lately.  Her dad seems distracted and is spending more time away from the B&B even when guests keep cancelling.  Her grandmother has started wearing perfume and lipstick and more and more boxes, stuff, are arriving daily.  Gram's time at the senior center seems to be spent with one individual more than the others.

A rap, Valentine roses and a winning theme contribute to a shifting of secrets.  A mystery, decades in the making, still needs to be resolved.  A person's family can be made of more than relatives.  Your herd just may appear when you need it the most.


When finishing this book for the second time moments ago, tears filled my eyes.  The last two sentences written by Elly Swartz are like the

still melty-chips warm

phrase she uses to describe one of many batches of cookies made by either Frankie or her Gram for the guests at the Greene Family B&B.  Elly's depictions of the B&B, the ten rules of The Greene Family B&B Rules and why they have those rules, and the names of the rooms after games, The Yahtzee Room, Checkers and Chess Rooms, Monopoly, Connect 4, Rubik's Cube, and Candy Land, supply readers with a real portrait of the characters of Frankie, her dad and her grandmother.  This family is full of warmth and everyday life challenges.  (Gram stays in The Game of Life room and Frankie hangs out in the Scrabble room.)

We are introduced to those family rituals which strengthens this family's love for one another.  Every year on Frankie's mother's birthday they celebrate with a picnic in the cemetery.  Every year Frankie leaves a drawing for her mother under a special rock found by her dad.  In the character of Annie Devlin, Frankie's mother's best friend and Frankie's kindergarten teacher, we are acquainted with another beautiful practice meant to continue lost love and create new love.

We can see into Frankie's huge heart in her conversations with each family member, Elliot and in how she mends her friendship with Jessica.  Frankie frequently takes cookies and breakfast to Elliot when they meet or go to school.  Frankie tries to stitch together the growing gap between her dad and grandmother, even before she understands her grandmother's problem, by writing another rule for the B&B.

One of the most touching techniques Elly Swartz does to further bind readers to Frankie and her thoughts is when we read the letters Frankie writes to her mother in her journal.  They are never shared with anyone but Lucy, Frankie's puppy, and Winston, Frankie's hedgehog.  As readers it's an honor to know Frankie's soul.  Here are some passages.

Elliot nods.  I bite my right pinkie nail.  It's always the sacrificial one.  "It's for his own good.  I mean all he does is work and fix stuff."
"If you get caught, this would be way worse than Rufus."
Rufus was my pet snake.  I flushed him down the toilet.  I thought he'd like it, and I also thought he could swim.  Turns out he couldn't, but he could clog the toilets of an entire B&B.  For two days.

Dad laughs.  I love his laugh.  It fills the space between us.

Dad's still talking.  "She was also a great rock climber."  He pauses and stares at her headstone.  "I was terrible at it."  He laughs.  "I mean, so bad."
I let the moment hang.  He seems to be reminiscing more with her than me.  I look at his face and wonder how many people one person gets in a lifetime.  I mean, is there some sort of cap on heart space?

This is part of a letter Frankie is writing to her mom.

Except the lightning.  No idea how to fix that.  I was glad it stopped long enough for Dad, Gram and me to finish our salami sandwiches, but now it's back.  It looks like shards of glass piercing my room.  I wish it would stop.  Truth is, I wish I could stop being afraid of it.  Don't get why I'm scared of it.  I don't remember that night.  Not the rain or the lightning or the smell of the shampoo Dad says you always used.  You know, Dad still keeps a bottle of it in the shower.

"The Wi-Fi in Connect 4 isn't working.  Again."
"Try connecting it."  I laugh.
Dad laughs, too, then grabs his tool box and heads upstairs.
Gram gives me a suspicious glance.
"What?" I ask in my I'm-not-hiding-anything voice.
"You tell me, Smart Cookie," she says.  Gram first called me this after I accidentally dyed all the B&B sheets and towels purple.


This book, Smart Cookie written by Elly Swartz, is one to read not once but at least once more.  And I guarantee you will be marking places with sticky notes or underlying phrases with your favorite highlighter.  You will come back to this story and characters as often as you can.  I highly recommend this as a read aloud.  Make sure you have a copy on your professional and personal bookshelves.  At the conclusion Elly Swartz includes Macbeth-The Rap by Frankie and Jess and resources consulted on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and related OC-spectrum disorders, including hoarding disorder.

To learn more about Elly Swartz and her other work, please follow the link attached to her name to access her website.  Elly provides a curriculum guide and an activity for this title at her site.  Elly is interviewed at It's All About The Journey, Katie Reviews Books, Beth McMullen Books, and YAYOMG! about this title.  She makes a guest appearance at Elly Swartz & MG At Heart Book Club: Books Between, Episode 42 with Corrina Allen.  At Scholastic's Ambassador of School Libraries, John Schumacher's blog, Watch. Connect. Read., Elly's cover for this title is revealed and she also writes an open letter to teachers and librarians.  Elly celebrated the release of Smart Cookie at the school where extraordinary teacher librarian Jennifer Reed champions all things reading and research in her library.  Read about it at Reederama.

The Cost Of Becoming

When you look at the definition of perfect the one thing constant in all the synonyms is there is no room for error.  To be perfect is to be flawless, the ideal, exemplary, the best and the ultimate.  To be fair, depending on the individual, the interpretation of each of these may be measured differently based on that person's perceptions.  What is perfect for one may not be perfect for another.

Perfection in one particular area can be a life goal.  Perfection can be a certain moment.  For some perfection is a way at looking at everything on any given day, every single day.  Finding Perfect (Farrar Straus Giroux, October 18, 2016), debut novel written by Elly Swartz, follows twelve-year-old Molly as her beliefs in what makes perfection and the results of striving for perfection shift dramatically.

blue pixie and the
siamese fighting fish

My cowboy boots scuff the wooden floor as I walk onto the stage, and for the next ninety seconds I won't think of anything but the rhythm and sound of each syllable in my poem.  Today is Round One of Lakeville Middle School's Poetry Slam Contest.

Molly has a plan, to win the Lakeville Middle School's Poetry Slam Contest, to bring her mom home earlier than the three hundred, sixty-five days she said she will be away.  (Her mother has left the States to keep her job by working and living in Canada.)  Molly also avoids odd numbers, loves even numbers, aligns her glass animal collection on her dresser by using a ruler, abhors dirt and craves cleanliness.

Her dad is constantly wrapped up in his own work with deadlines, conference calls and meetings.  Her older sister, Kate, a freshman in high school, is convinced their mom is not coming home at all; this job in Toronto is merely an extension of their parent's six-month separation.  Ian, her younger brother, a kindergarten student, can hardly sleep at night from the loss of his mother's presence.  Molly believes it's now her sole responsibility to keep Ian safe from harm and healthy.

Hannah, a nearby neighbor and Molly's life-long friend, knows Molly better than anyone else, offering her support.  Their bond is unshakable.  Bridget another of Molly's friends is more focused on herself and a decidedly unhealthy preoccupation with obituaries.  Both of these girls care for Molly in their own way but they don't necessarily like each other.

Chapter by chapter we step into the world of Molly's mind, how she views every aspect of her day.  Her habits increase as the stress of her mother's absence, her plan and the care of Ian weigh on her heavily.  It is becoming progressively harder for her to present perfect Molly to the world and keep obsessive-compulsive Molly hidden.  She is inwardly frantic about what is happening to her.  She thinks she is truly crazy.  She feels trapped, backed into a corner of herself she wishes is different.  She wants her old self back.

With the passing of each day, she strives to focus on her plan.  Another habit comes charging into her mind, counting by twos.  Her poem during Round Two of the Poetry Slam Contest is one more attempt to share her rising fear at her mental state.  One lie builds on another lie, day after day.  Secrets are discovered and secrets are revealed.  With the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another, the tension builds silently screaming for release.  Numbers erupt.  Exposed.  Nothing will be the same.


One of the first things you realize when reading this novel by Elly Swartz is the exquisite care taken to include a multitude of small but equally important moments in Molly's day to day world.  We are intimately aware of the changes the entire family, but especially Molly, endures with the void left by her mother's absence.  Descriptions of how the kitchen looks and smells when her mom is home compared to now are vivid and heartbreaking.  We are beside Molly when she sits in her mother's now empty closet to clear her mind.

I loved my tenth birthday.  Everything was perfect if you ignored the brownish-green swamp juice we had with my cake.  I'd just turned ten, our whole house smelled like chocolate, and Mom and Dad made me a birthday scavenger hunt.  That was long before their official temporary separation that started just six months before Mom fled to Toronto and our kitchen smelled like takeout all the time.

I crack open the doors and slide onto the honey-colored wood floor.  There are no clothes, no shoes, not even a belt left.  I set my special sea glass down on the bare wood.  Mom and I found it together on Chapin Beach when I was six.  Two pieces had washed up on the sand next to each other.  One turquoise and one gold.  Mom kept the gold and I have the turquoise.  It's always with me, so I never have to be without it and her.

Not a beat is missed from one chapter to the next, minutes flowing into other minutes.  This increases our involvement with Molly and the other characters.  Chapter titles hint at the events to come.  We get a very real sense of the growing concern Molly feels inside through the private poems she writes in her journal.  We are her but also we are separate in wanting to reach out to her, to help her.

The situations each of the characters find themselves in are very real; a parent who is not sure of her way or place, single parenthood, a new high school student with an older boyfriend, a young child feeling afloat in a miserable sea, missing his mother, a girl whose father lost his job and changes loom in her future and another friend who has lost a parent through death.  Their lives are pieced together with Molly's in a truthful tribute to the ups and downs life delivers.  We understand this through the narrative, Molly's thoughts and dialogue.  When Molly's state of mind hangs bright and clear like a Fourth of July firework blooming outward, each person reacts completely as we would expect.  The meticulous and powerful results bring hope...to everyone.  Here are several more passages.

It was the start of last summer and we spent two hours making lemonade and waiting in the hot sun for the customers who never came.  I washed my hands forty-four times that day.  I don't know what was weirder:  that I washed my hands so many times or that I counted.  I remember standing at the sink in Hannah's kitchen.
Soap.
Water.
Rub.
Rinse.

It takes us just five more minutes to get to the bench outside of school.  Hannah looks all serious.  "I need to tell you something.  It's big.  Sit with me."
I stare at the bench.  Peeling paint.  Dried mustard.  Dirt.  I stuff my hands into my pockets and try a cleansing yoga breath, but my Zen moment sticks in my throat.  "Um. I'm good here."
Hannah dumps her backpack next to her and I silently pray it doesn't land in the mustard.  She leans in to tell me her news when Bridget shows up.

We get off at the next stop and I check my phone.  Nothing from Mom.  I know she's probably selling her Beet-Kale-Pumpkin blend someplace where there's no reception, but I get a tug of worry that she's forgotten about me.  I tuck my fear into my back right pocket.  Mom says that's what you do with worries that you can't get rid of and can't control.

When I read Finding Perfect written by Elly Swartz the first time, I was on high alert monitoring the increase in a reaction my puppy was experiencing due to vaccines.  Throughout the wee hours of the morning, while there was still a part of me watching her, I firmly stepped into Molly's life; drawn there by the writing skills and research conducted by Elly Swartz.  I was crying out for people to help her, to notice her beyond her neat-and-tidy actions.  Most of all I cared for her as if she is a flesh-and-blood person.  This middle grade debut novel has my highest recommendation.  Everyone needs to read this...more than once.  Trust me.  Elly Swartz includes experts consulted and resources consulted at the close of the book.

To learn more about Elly Swartz please visit her website by following the link attached to her name. At the publisher's website you can read an excerpt.  There are also a reading group guide and a teacher's reading guide available there.  The cover reveal for this title is at Emu's Debuts.  Elly Swartz stops by Scholastic's Ambassador of School Libraries John Schumacher's blog, Watch. Connect. Read., completing his sentences.  Elly Swartz is interviewed at DEBtastic Reads!, Literary Rambles, and Beth McMullen Books.  At School Library Journal, The Yarn, educator Colby Sharp introduces us to the audio book trailer for Finding Perfect.  Elly Swartz chats with teacher librarian Matthew Winner at All The Wonders, Episode 299.  Debut author Bridget Hodder (The Rat Prince) reviews Finding Perfect at the Nerdy Book Club.