Isn't that a gorgeous cover? And here's what caught my eye about this one. It's a road trip book. I LOVE road trip books like AMY & ROGER'S EPIC DETOUR, or CRASH INTO ME. Not to mention I love animals. And the love of animals. I'm a sucker for books like that every time.
Also, in a starred review, Kirkus says:
Monniger’s writing is delicious, evocative and, especially during horse-focused scenes, moving.
...a tender and authentic voyage into the mind of a wise, funny and wholly likable protagonist.
Delicious! I love it when writing is compared with something tasty and edible! Here's the official synopsis from GoodReads:
Two girls: Best friends Hattie and Delores feel that life in their small New Hampshire town is a dead end.
One horse: Old and about to be put down, Speed gets a reprieve when Hattie and Delores decide to save him.
A road trip: Determined to set Speed free, Hattie and Delores drive him west in search of rangeland. But the road takes some unexpected turns as the girls get their own taste of freedom—and as they confront the reasons they left home.
Everybody knows someone who loves horses. And I'm sure everyone knows someone who loves a tender and warm story. Why not pick it up for Christmas for them?
Biography (from the author's website):
Joseph Monninger has published eleven novels and three non-fiction books. His work has appeared in American Heritage, Scientific American, Readers Digest, Glamour, Playboy, Story, Fiction, The Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and Ellery Queen, among other publications. He has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and has also received a fellowship from the New Hampshire Council for the Arts. His young adult novel, Baby, was awarded the 2008 award for best children’s literature from the Peace Corps Writers. It was also chosen as a top ten book by YALSA, the American Library Association. The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s’ Books awarded Hippie Chick, a young adult novel, a blue ribbon for a top book of 2008.
Joseph Monninger grew up in Westfield, New Jersey and attended Temple University on a football scholarship. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, from 1975-77. He has been a licensed New Hampshire Fishing Guide and has fly-fished from New Zealand to Wyoming’s Wind River Range. He lives with his wife, Wendy, and his son, Justin, in a converted barn near New Hampshire’s Baker River. For several years his family competed in the New England Sled Dog sprint races and ran a small sled dog business in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Laika and Willow, two sled dogs, live in happy retirement with them.
As a teacher at one time or another at the University of New Hampshire, the Lincoln School in Providence, Rhode Island, The American International School in Vienna, and at Plymouth State University, Joseph Monninger has spent thirty years in classrooms. During the summers he directed academic enrichment programs at Williams and Amherst Colleges. He led student groups on bicycle tours across Europe, sailed the Whitsunday Islands near the Great Barrier Reef, and worked on community service projects in Montserrat, West Indies and on the Crow Reservation in Montana. He has taken a mail boat across the southern edge of Newfoundland and, as a young man, hitch-hiked across the United States three times.
Find Joseph on the web at http://joemonninger.com/
1 comments:
Thanks for this spotlight! I really like his adult novels and didn't realize he'd written a YA one as well.
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