This verse novel, Reaching for Sun, is certainly a coming-of-age story, but, more than that, it is about love and acceptance. Josie, the protagonist, is an adolescent with all the associated angst on top of the fact that she has celebral palsy. Living in a female house with her single mother and maternal grandmother, Josie is nourished by both these women and the things they grow. Once a large farm, the current five acres have been encroached upon by expensive housing developments, but Gran spends enormous amounts of time working in the soil. Josie is very close to her grandmother while her mother juggles a waitress job with community college.

A new neighbor appears one day chasing a butterfly. Jordan seems not to notice Josie’s disability and accepts her intelligence and companionship. Thus begins Josie’s first attraction to a boy and a deep friendship which survives a summer separation and Gran’s stroke.

Figurative language dips into flowers, plants, trees, and the entire outside world as nature permeates this book. There is even the watermark of a growing flower at the bottom right of each page. The book ends, appropriately so, with “And me, I’m the wisteria vine growing up the arbor of this odd family, reaching for sun.”

This small gem just won the Schneider Family Book Award for Middle School. This award honors an author or illustrator for the artistic expression of the disability experience for children and teens. Once again we are reminded to provide books as mirrors in which young people may see themselves as well as windows through which they may see others different from themselves. Reaching for Sun is such a book.

Zimmer, always a teacher, has lots of classroom suggestions on her web page, http://www.tracievaughnzimmer.com/.

Other 2008 Schneider Family Book Awards:

Children’s Book : KAMI AND THE YAKS by Andrea Steen Stryer, illustrated by Bert Dodson (Bay Otter Press)

Teen Book: HURT GO HAPPY by Ginny Rorby (Starscape / Tom Doherty)