The Girl and the Grove

by Eric Smith

Overview

Teenager Leila’s life is full of challenges. From bouncing around the foster care system to living with seasonal affective disorder, she’s never had an easy road. Leila keeps herself busy with her passion for environmental advocacy, monitoring the Urban Ecovists message board and joining a local environmental club with her best friend, Sarika. And now that Leila has finally been adopted, she dares to hope her life will improve.


But the voices in Leila's head are growing louder by the day. Ignoring them isn't working anymore. Something calls out to her from the grove at Fairmount Park. Is she ready to answer?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635830187
Publisher:	North Star Editions
Publication date:	05/08/2018
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Eric Smith is a young adult author and literary agent who grew up in the wilds of New Jersey. When he isn't working on books (his and other peoples), he can be found writing about books for places like Book Riot and Paste Magazine. He lives with his wife, Nena, and their legion of small furry animals in Michigan. Find him online at www.ericsmithrocks.com or on Twitter at @ericsmithrocks.

Editorial Reviews

Smith’s novel covers the important topics of adoption, identity, and environmental awareness, while also touching on teenage relationships and inserting beautiful images of nature into the text.”—School Library Journal



"Readers will feel for Leila; her emotions around her family history are raw and real. " —Kirkus Reviews

"Smith’s empathetic portrayal of an outside-the-box teen’s search for her real identity will hold readers." —Booklist

From the Publisher

02/01/2018
Gr 7 Up—Leila has been in the foster care system since she was two years old. Now a teenager, she has finally been adopted by Jon and Lisabeth, a loving couple doing their best to make her feel welcome. Though she tries to accept her adoptive parents' warm gestures, she struggles to let down the wall that she has built around herself. Leila confides in her best friend, Sarika, whom she met in a group home, and reveals that she hears distracting voices at random times each day. Leila's passion for the environment leads her to join a summer volunteer group that raises awareness about conservation issues. When the voices increase in frequency, the teen follows their direction and finds herself in the midst of an endangered forest, where she comes across mythical creatures who shed light on her personal history and the story of the park in which they reside. Leila must integrate this new knowledge with her environmental activism in order to succeed in her quest for belonging. Smith's novel covers the important topics of adoption, identity, and environmental awareness, while also touching on teenage relationships and inserting beautiful images of nature into the text. While the themes are worthy ones, their advancement lacks sophistication and integrity. The characters, especially Leila's adoptive parents, are underdeveloped, and the details of Leila's psychological issues are never deeply explored. The language reverts to juvenile phrases and the plot is too often contrived. VERDICT A secondary purchase for middle school collections looking to add environmental fiction.—Karin Greenberg, Manhasset High School, Manhasset, NY

School Library Journal

2018-03-20
An adopted teen hears voices on the wind that beckon her to an abandoned grove in a nearby park where she learns unimaginable secrets about her origins.Leila, a brown-skinned high schooler with thick, curly hair and seasonal affective disorder, has an unusual connection to nature. She doesn't know who her birth parents are or where they were from, but after years in a group home and foster homes around Philadelphia, she has found a permanent family with Jon, whose race is not mentioned, and Lisabeth, who is cued as black. Leila struggles to open herself up to her new parents. Sarika, a South Asian-American girl she befriended in the group home, is the only one who knows that Leila hears voices, which she fights to suppress. Through her passion for the environment, Leila meets a cute park ranger who helps her find the grove of trees that becomes the most important environmental cause she's ever had to fight for. Readers will feel for Leila; her emotions around her family history are raw and real. The secondary characters are less convincing, and the fantastical aspect of Leila's connection to nature may leave some readers confused about seasonal affective disorder. An unusual work of magical realism. (Fiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews

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