Her entry begins:
I always have more books halfway finished than I can even remember. But I just returned from a writing retreat at the Highlights Foundation. While there, I got to see Meg Medina receive her Artist-in-Residence award, and all of us were given her new novel, Burn Baby Burn.About Making Friends with Billy Wong, from the publisher:
True confessions- I don't read a lot of YA. I'm a middle-grade reader at heart. But this book- well, all I can say is that the National Book Award committee knew what they were doing when they listed this edgy, interesting, historically...[read on]
Azalea is not happy about being dropped off to look after Grandmother Clark. Even if she didn't care that much about meeting the new sixth graders in her Texas hometown, those strangers seem much preferable to the ones in Paris Junction.Learn more about the book and author at Augusta Scattergood's website and blog.Talk about troubled Willis DeLoach or gossipy Melinda Bowman. Who needs friends like these!
And then there's Billy Wong, a Chinese-American boy who shows up to help in her grandmother's garden. Billy's great-aunt and uncle own the Lucky Foods grocery store, where days are long and some folks aren't friendly. For Azalea, whose family and experiences seem different from most everybody she knows, friendship has never been easy. Maybe this time, it will be.
Inspired by the true accounts of Chinese immigrants who lived in the American South during the civil rights era, these side by side stories — one in Azalea's prose, the other in Billy's poetic narrative — create a poignant novel and reminds us that friends can come to us in the most unexpected ways.
The Page 69 Test: The Way to Stay in Destiny.
The Page 69 Test: Making Friends with Billy Wong.
Writers Read: Augusta Scattergood.
--Marshal Zeringue
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