Summer Adventures: Friendship and Growth in Young Adult Fiction

INTRODUCTION

Kate Lundeen is back today, sharing her thoughts about Florence Migga‘s debut Upper MG/YA novel, The Summer Scrapbook.

It’s wonderful to have a best friend! However, sometimes relationships with your besties can be a bit too close. Ava, Becca, and Cat are best buds. They usually spend every moment of their summer together. One summer, separation looms.

Ava gets the opportunity to live in London for the summer. Becca goes to Whistling Ridge sleep away camp and Cat is left all on her lonesome. The girls promise to make a scrapbook to share at the end of the summer. Will the girls do well apart for the whole summer? What opportunities for character growth lie in store for each girl as they navigate the summer apart? The following paragraphs sketch out a taste of the character development in each girl. For the full character growth journeys. read the story.

Cat spends the beginning of the summer down in the dumps because she is left at home. Ava and Becca go off on summer adventures which heightens Cat’s loneliness. Finally, after days in her room, her mom encourages Cat to go to the pool and make some new friends. Cat reluctantly goes but discovers that a cute boy and some of the popular girls at school want to hang with her. Cat learns that it’s healthy and okay to expand one’s friend group and she has fun doing it. She goes on mall group dates to the movies or shopping, and she starts to blossom!

Ava is busier updating her social media accounts than she is exploring and enjoying London at the beginning of the novel. Her parents send her on a scavenger hunt to cure her of this addiction. She gets to explore London in the company of a cute neighborhood boy named Derrick. The catch is the team has a list of places to visit but they cannot take their phones or update to social media. They must take photos using parent monitored phones at each location. Ava resists at first but as the summer progresses, she grows to enjoy the times with Derrick as he shows her around London and romance may be in the air between the two of them. Ava learns that it’s okay to put down the phone and enjoy human company in a fantastic overseas destination.

At the beginning of the book, Camp Whistling Ridge seems like scary foreign territory to Becca. All she wants to do is blend into the back of camp sessions and go hide in her cabin with her favorite books. At one of the mealtimes, Becca finds another camper who loves the same books she does. The camp staff divides the campers into squads for competitions and other group activities. As the summer progresses, Becca comes out of her shell and starts to see that her team members value her opinion if only she is brave enough to speak up.

Florence Migga’s story teaches readers that it is okay to have best friends but sometimes time away can bring the best personal growth.

From the author’s website.

GIVEAWAY

If you would like to win this upper MG/YA novel, leave me a comment by September 23. U.S. addresses only. Share it on social media and you have a second chance!

OUR GUEST BLOGGER

Kate Lundeen is a frequent book reviewer on this blog. She last shared her thoughts about  Heart of the Green Leaf.  She writes, “The Lord’s hand of watchful care and protection blessed my life from my start as a tiny premature infant. Doctors diagnosed me with cerebral palsy from birth complications which mainly affected my legs and motor skills. 

“I also have a learning disability that does not allow me to write down or process thoughts as fast as other people.  I obtained an Associate in Arts degree from a North Carolina community college after five years of hard work! I enveloped a love for writing in college. Now I pen articles for my local church newsletter and write book reviews. I enjoy my current job as a part-time library assistant in a Christian library in Matthews, NC. I have a servant’s heart and a willing attitude to grow in old skills and develop new ones along whatever path the Lord chooses to take me.”

Make sure you check out Greg Pattridge’s MMGM blog on Monday!