Jean Heilprin DiehlRecensioni

Not selected for BF 18 -
I did enjoy this book but was not totally captivated by it.
The main character is "dealing" with her parents seperation, her moms depression & illness, as well as trying to accomplish a record time at her summer swim meets. She is also babysitting for a neighbors autistic daughter & she sees something the parents havent.

https://audrasbookblabbing.wordpress.com/2020/05/30/tiny-infinities-book-review/

Topics to consider: divorce, family troubles, mental illness, drugs, and brain disorders.

Tiny Infinities is a heart-wrenching book that tells the story of a young girl trying to put a broken life together. At first, the book seemed fairly average to me, but the characters and the story line developed more and more until it became a deep, thought-provoking read! Diehl's book doesn't feel like a fiction tale - every bit of it feels so real and raw.

The character development was very fun to read. There were some characters I adored and others I loved to hate. Yet, the author made me take pity on every single character at some point. No one was the "bad guy." No one was the "good guy." They were all simply people trying to make it in a tough situation. Although I felt sad and frustrated at times, by the end, I could feel the hope that radiated from the characters.

If you're looking for a perfect fairy-tale ending with happiness abounding, this is not the book for you. But, if you're looking for something that feels real and emotional, this book is a perfect fit. It's a reminder that life doesn't always turn out the way we wish it to, but that's okay.

~I was sent a free copy of this book for an honest review~

I thought this was... fine? A segment of my students has an endless appetite for the [b:Rain Reign|20575434|Rain Reign|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396393170s/20575434.jpg|39843440]/[b:Counting by 7s|15937108|Counting by 7s|Holly Goldberg Sloan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396225872s/15937108.jpg|19034797]/[b:Out of My Mind|6609765|Out of My Mind|Sharon M. Draper|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347602096s/6609765.jpg|6803732] genre, so I hoped this would meet the same need. My sense is that it just doesn't move fast enough, despite there being a lot going on: Alice's relationship with her dad, Alice's mom's mental illness, Alice's new friendships, swimming, baby-sitting for Piper, whatever's going on in her parents' relationship... I felt overwhelmed by all the plot and issues, and still kind of bored by the pace.

I also felt that everything resolved too easily, and in some unsatisfying ways. It's all well and good that Alice's mom got a job offer, but she's going to get fired in like a week if she has the same attitude at work that she does at home. She needs to be in therapy, and I'm frustrated that the book doesn't acknowledge that. Also, most of the book seems to foreshadow some darkness in Piper's dad, so much so that I expected it would turn out that she's mute because he abuses her. But then it turns out Piper has a rare but treatable disease that means she's going to be fine, and now her dad is cool with everything? The tone of his character did not work for me. Not to mention that it seems dishonest to ditch all of the work the book did to acknowledge the challenges of raising a kid with significant disabilities -- her diagnosis means she'll start to talk again, problem solved!

I'm going to try this with my 6th and 7th grade stronger readers who like the aforementioned titles and see what they think, but I'm not optimistic. (Side note: the cover is way too dark and low-contrast. You can barely read the title, and neither the title nor the design give any information about the content. This one's going to be hard to sell because of that alone.)

Angry that her father has left, twelve-year-old Alice swears that she will live in her family's old Renaissance tent until he agrees to return; but after she meets her mute four-year-old neighbor Piper she finds herself becoming involved in the child's life--and when she hears the little girl speak a word for the first time in years she sets out to prove to Piper's parents that the dismal diagnosis they received for their daughter may be all wrong.

This book was bittersweet but felt so real to me. Alice's emotional upheaval and anger mixed with confusion and her desire to put things back to the way they were before the world broke really resonated with me, and I was so glad that she found a way to find herself again in the end. I loved the interwoven plots and the characters, and the complexity of the interactions between them all. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys coming of age adolescent books, but also to anyone who has lived through the upheaval of divorce at a young age.

This review and many more like it are available on Read Till Dawn.

My parents haven't gotten divorced, thank goodness, but I imagine that if they did I would probably behave a lot like Alice does.

I mean, running away to the backyard and swearing to live in a tent until your dad moves back in totally seems like a reasonable response to learning that your parents are separating. Is that just me? Maybe? Ok.

Anyway, I feel like Alice is a very normal girl in many ways. Besides her strong response to her parents' separation, she tries to keep the summer as normal as possible. She focuses on her passion for swimming, and her goal to get on the swim team record board, and on babysitting her young neighbor.

I think my favorite storyline was the one with her parents, just because it was so sad and frustrating and . . . real. Beyond that, I liked the babysitting storyline just because Piper is such a precious little girl and I was rooting for them to figure out how best to help her (though the way they did was so cheesy/unrealistic I had to swallow some serious disbelief). I wasn't a huge fan of her big brother Owen, the illegitimate pre-marriage son of her father who seemed nice enough but also like kind of a player (and seriously, does a MG book need a character with such a morally iffy backstory?).

As for Harriet, I didn't really like her at all. I'm kind of tired of the trope of "quirky best friends" who say whatever pops into their head and acts like kind of a jerk but gets away with it because they're so "smart." Harriet just really annoyed me, probably more than was entirely reasonable. But I really appreciated that she kind of annoyed Alice too, and that Harriet didn't entirely get away with everything she did and said.

All in all, I liked reading Tiny Infinities. At places, I was really swept away by it; at others, I was merely entertained (or vaguely annoyed with characters in it). But it's a good book, and if you're interested then I do recommend you pick it up.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Realistic narrator navigates the unraveling of her parents marriage while striving to attain some goals of her own.

I received this book through a giveaway. I’m surprised I didn’t like this one as much as I thought I would. It’s a good glimpse into the family dynamic when the child becomes the parent, but there wasn’t really a solid resolution to it. I enjoyed the sections having to do with Piper, and how her and Alice start to bond. The thing that dropped it to a 3 stars was the long sections on swimming. I understand it was a huge part of the main character’s life, but this story could have been so much more if the relationships in it were more developed. I’m sad this one didn’t work for me.

Alice's summer is not starting the way she wanted it to. Her father has moved out of the house, her brothers are going to live with Aunt Ruthie, and her mother hasn't been herself for a long time due to a car accident. Because of her birthday, she is at the bottom of her age group in swimming and she doesn't really have any friends. She decides to live in a tent in the backyard until her dad returns home. Things start to turn around when she meets Harriet at swimming and she gets a job babysitting her new neighbor Piper who hasn't spoken in a long time. When Harriet decides to study the fireflies in Alice's backyard (tiny infinities), Alice takes Pipe to see them and hears her say a word. A series of events occurs that end with summer turning out not so bad after all. Alice is quite the complex character dealing with family and friend situations.

This is a sweet story of a young girl named Alice. She was a passionate swimmer and the oldest child in her family. After a major car accident kept her mother first hospitalized and then bedridden ( far longer than it should have) Alice picked up her mom's share of family duties and simply made it work. Alice was good with younger children and often worked with them at swim meets. Life was going on in a fairly steady manner when the bottom really fell out. Her father moved away. Thus began the summer of Alices rebellion, and of her learning how to live for herself.

After a rocky start and huge misunderstanding when she met the new neighbors, they had much to do with Alice finally recognizing her own value in the world. She made a friend named Harriet, another called Owen and a summer that began disastrously with her father moving out, filled with unexpected incidents, some good times and one near miracle

This is a nice story, with nice characters and a bit of a surprise at the end...

I simply loved this book. Alice at 12 years old is facing some major hurdles in her life. Her mother, after a car accident, has become a recluse in her bedroom. This ultimately resulted in Alice's father moving out of the house and the further splitting of her family when her two younger brothers go to live with their aunt for the summer vacation. However, Alice decides to stay home, but she will not live in the house until her father comes to his senses and moves back. Instead she erects and moves into a tent in the backyard. This is not the only challenge Alice encounters. She has new neighbors that include a cute toddler, an older sister who has some type of speech or learning issue and an adorable brother a few years older than Alice - true "crush" material. Not only does Alice help out with the younger two children, she also hears the youngster with the speech issues say a word, although no one really believes this is possible. Alice has to devise a way to show everyone that Piper did speak. Fortunately, she has help from her "crush" and her new swim team friend, who not only helps solve this mystery, but convinces Alice to stop trying to swim freestyle and switch to backstroke, leading to much more success! This is a book about change, opening oneself up to new people and experiences, and being able to take advice from others. These are issues every teen has to cope with, so it is extremely relevant to young people. Furthermore, there is a great deal of fascinating information on fireflies! This is a magical, wonderfully written tale with extremely likable characters. What a great debut!

I generally love YA books but I must say, it took a lot of effort to get through this one. A lot of the book involves swimming, which I found very boring. I am not a swimmer. Maybe I would have enjoyed the book more if I swam in competition. As is, it took away from the rest of the book for me.

I received this book as part of the LibraryThing EarlyReviewers program. As a regular reader of YA, I would say this aims at the younger end of the spectrum. Although it's not the type of book I typically read, I think it did a good job. Alice (12) is trying to a) do her best at competing in swimming, her favorite thing, and b) hold her life together while her parents negotiate splitting up.

I liked how the world of adults was not entirely understandable to her - for example, when her dad tries to explain that adults don't just stay together for the kids, and that the relationship hadn't been going well for a while, I could see that there was a lot he wasn't saying, and I could see her not getting it. But that makes sense.

I liked that the drama in the book was based on her relationship with her parents and friends, but there wasn't mean-girl drama or overblown romance. She has a crush on a boy, but is mildly relieved when he turns out to have a girlfriend somewhere else, because she's not ready to figure out how all that works. Mostly it's about a couple kids trying to figure out how to be friends, and Alice trying to figure out how she fits in the new post-split world. Having lost touch with some of her friends, she makes a new friend who is really nerdy, and it takes them a while to figure out how to do friendship.

There's also some drama from the realistic miscommunication between stressed adults and stressed kids. Alice befriends a neighbor kid who has some neurological issues and does not seem to talk or hear speech, and when the girl says a word to her, no one believes her. Alice's mom, who is struggling after a car accident, doesn't have much time to listen. So in some ways (English teachers - essay question!) Alice is dealing with a couple people who she has to work hard to communicate with.

Things work out fine in the end. Not perfect, but fine. Real. And Alice has started to answer a bit of her current life questions.

Tiny Infinities by J.H Diehl, is a Middle Grade novel with themes above it’s age range. It was all about invisible lines drawn in life. How do we determine when warm becomes hot? When cool becomes warm? Were is that lines exactly? It also reminds us that in life there is a lot of gray area. Alice is having a rough summer. Her mother is sick and her family is falling apart. Her dad and brothers moved out and she’s moved into a tent in her back yard. Nothing is going the way she thinks it should. If her dad still loves her, why doesn’t he live at home? Why does her mother have to be so negative all the time? And why can’t the small child next door hear or talk? Alice tries to figure it all out with the help of her friends, Harriet and Owen.

This book involves a lot of talk about swimming. I was honestly bored to death during these parts. Another thing this book has an excess of is science and big word. Seriously, Harriet knows words I don’t know. Or didn’t know, until reading this novel. However it made up for this lack when it came to scenes with Piper, the child who moved in next door to Alice. Piper can’t talk or hear. She used to be able to, and one day she just didn’t anymore, until one day while babysitting, Alice hears her say a word. No one believes Alice, which naturally makes her feel worse, because of course, her life is falling apart this summer. She makes it her mission to get Piper to talk again, and in the process, makes her mother more untrusting of her than ever.

This story was good. But I feel like it was a little too deep for a middle grade novel, I don’t think kids could exactly comprehend the themes behind it. Overall though, the story was good, minus the swimming bits. 3 stars.

Thanks to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this novel ahead of it’s May 2018 release date!

I just finished reading Loon Chase by Jean Heilprin Diehl. I learned about the Ojibwa language, The Cree connecting with the cry of the loon and how to make a ceremonial loon mask used by the Yup'ik (Eskimo) people. You can download the pattern from www.SylvanDellPublishing.com

The story starts with a mother and her son embarking on a peaceful canoe ride with their dog Miles. Trying to keep the dog away from the loons is quite a journey and the story unfolds with the boy actually meeting up with a loon.The pastel illustrations are superb.

I have personally been to Maine, have gone canoeing with my husband and have seen and heard the cry of the loons. It is a memory I will always treasure, a peaceful moment out in nature where all is at rest. You've got to get this very educational read and learn of the boy's journey with the loons and his dog.

If you were a beaver, how do you think that you would feel if you had trouble swimming well and building lodges? Beatrix is a beaver who lives with her parents and two older siblings in a spacious lodge on Beaver Creek. Her brother Bevan is an expert with twigs and mud. Her sister Beverly performs perfect underwater somersaults. But whatever Beatrix tries to do, whether gnawing trees, stashing branches, storing food for winter, mending the lodge, building a dam, or digging a canal, something always seems to go wrong. Wondering what she’s good for, one day she swims upstream and gets caught in a trap. And when Beverly and Bevan come to find her, they get caught in traps too. How can they get out? Will they ever be able to go home? Is there anyone who can help them?
Did you know that beavers are the largest rodents in North America? In years past, our boys participated in a couple of nature programs at local parks, one in Dayton, OH, and the other in St. Louis, MO, related to beavers. Author Jean Heilprin Diehl’s cute story, accompanied by Cathy Morrison’s lovable illustrations, will not only acquaint children with the habits of beavers but also encourage them to discover their own special talents. Four pages of “For Creative Minds” learning activities include fun facts about beavers and their adaptations, a hands-on craft making lodges and dams, and thought questions concerning whether beavers are pests or environmental engineers. The publisher’s website has even more free activities. After reading Three Little Beavers, youngsters will be “as eager as a beaver” to know more about nature’s dam-builders.

Met this author and so was so nice!½