Seeing Cinderella -- A Review and Giveaway

Thought for the day:  

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revis­ing a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” ~ Stephen King

A gift for my writer friends. Great reminders for manuscript revision : http://childrenspublishing.blogspot.com/2012/06/devils-in-detail-at-least-when-it-comes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fkidlit+%28Adventures+in+Children%27s+Publishing%29  from author Susan Sipal

The WINNER of the autographed copy of What She Left Behind from my last posting is Jennifer Rumberger. It pays to link my post somewhere for extra entries. Jennifer did and she won! I will be sending that out to you right away, Jennifer. Congratulations! By the way, Jennifer is also a children's author and has a great blog. You can check that out by clicking HERE.

Since today is Father’s Day and I have some family things to do, I’m going to simply post my review for a wonderful middle-grade book I read recently while wearing my hat as a reviewer for the Sacramento Book Review. I was happy to get my hands on Seeing Cinderella by Jenny Lundquist after reading a little about the concept. Sometimes I will read about what I think is a terrific concept for a book and be terribly disappointed by the book itself. Not in this case. Seeing Cinderella delivers. Here is my review from the Sacramento Book Review.

# # #

Callie will be starting middle school tomorrow, and now she has to get glasses! She is given temporary hideous, black-rimmed glasses. Everyone will make fun of her. It’s bad enough she has frizzy hair and freckles. The first day of school doesn’t go well when she finds she is stuck sharing a locker with a Goth girl. When Callie tries her new glasses, she finds she can see people’s thoughts. This is pretty helpful in math class, since she can read the correct answers in the teacher’s thoughts, but other times it’s not always fun to know what people think. When Callie’s best friend, Ellen, starts to pull away and seems to be making a new best friend, Callie is really unhappy with what she sees in other people’s thoughts. Callie is offered the lead in the school play but asks the teacher to give it to Ellen. Then Ellen decides she likes Scott, and Callie has liked him forever!

“Sometimes I really hated wearing the glasses around Mom. A lot of days I felt like she didn’t even see me. Even if she was looking right at me, she was too busy thinking about my dad to really see me. If Mom hated him so much (right now, anyway) and I reminded her of him, then how did she feel about me?”

Jenny Lundquist

Jenny Lundquist has written a gem of a middle-grade novel that examines so many problems faced by kids in that difficult stage of life. Girls especially will love the story, characters, and situations, all of which ring true.

# # #

If you haven’t seen this issue of the Sacramento Book Review, you can click HERE and be magically taken to it. It’s a HUGE issue this time with a large section of reviews written by kids along with the usual reviews of all kinds of books. There’s something for everyone. By the way, the cover review, which is well worth your time, is written by my friend, critique partner, and regular blog reader Elizabeth Varadan. So give it a look.

If you would like to receive a gently-read copy of Seeing Cinderella, just leave a comment on this post, and I will put your name in a drawing. If you would like to have your name in the hat more than once, post a link on Facebook or on your blog, and let me know. I will put your name in once for each. That was lucky for Jennifer Rumberger! But please leave a comment no matter what. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom. Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper right-hand corner of this page, pop your email address in, and you will receive an email each time I put up a new post. Your information will not be shared with anyone.