Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.
Showing posts with label Sandra Byrd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandra Byrd. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

First Wild Card Tour: Asking for Trouble

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!



Today's Wild Card author is:


and the book:

Tyndale House Publishers (March 4, 2010)
***Special thanks to Christy Wong of Tyndale House Publishers for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:



Best-selling author Sandra Byrd has published nearly three dozen books in the Christian market, including her latest series, French Twist, which includes the Christy Award finalist Let Them Eat Cake (WaterBrook Press, 2007) and its sequel, Bon Appétit (WaterBrook Press, 2008). Many of her acclaimed fiction and nonfiction books target the tween and young adult markets. She has also published a book for new moms entitled Heartbeats. Several of Sandra’s shorter works have appeared in periodicals such as Relevant, Clubhouse, Pockets, Decision, and Guideposts. For the past seven years, she has shared her secrets with the many students she mentors through the Christian Writers Guild. Before turning to full-time writing, Sandra was an acquisitions editor in the ABA market. She lives in the Seattle, Washington, area with her husband and two children.

Visit the author's website.



Product Details:

List Price: $6.99
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers (March 4, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414325975
ISBN-13: 978-1414325972

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:


I hung back at the doorway to the cafeteria of my new supercool British school, Wexburg Academy. Most of the lunch tables were already packed, and the room was buzzing with chatter. The populars, whom I'd secretly nicknamed the Aristocats, commanded an entire table right in the center of the room. Their good looks and posh accents made up the sun around which all other tables orbited. The normal kids were in the second circle, arranged by friends or clubs or activities. The drama table was on the outer edge of the room, and so were the geeks, the nerds, and the punk wannabes--way out there like Neptune, but still planets. Most everyone had a group. I didn't.

Okay, so there was one table with lots of room. The leftovers table. It might as well have been the dark side of the moon.

No way.

I skipped lunch--again--and headed to the library. One of the computers was available and I logged on, desperately hoping for an e-mail from Seattle.

There was an e-mail from my grandmother reminding me to floss because British dentists only cleaned adult teeth.

Spam from Teen Vogue.

An invitation to join the Prince Harry fan club--​I opened it and gave it a quick scan. I'd consider it more later.

And . . . one from Jen!

I clicked open the e-mail from my best friend at home--well, it had been my home till a couple of months ago--hoping for a lunch full of juicy news served alongside tasty comments about how she missed me and was planning stuff for my next visit home. I craved something that would take me the whole lunch period to read and respond to and remind me that I did have a place somewhere in this universe.

From: Jen
To: Savannah


Hey, Fortune Cookie, so how's it going? Met the Queen yet? LOL. Sorry I haven't written too much. It's been so busy. Samantha took the position you'd been promised on the newspaper staff. She's brand new, but then again you would have been too. It seemed strange without you at first, but I think she'll do okay--maybe even better than okay. And hey, life has changed for everyone, right? Things are crazy busy at school, home, and church. We hang out a lot more now that a bunch of us are driving. Will write again in a few weeks.

Miss you!
Jen



A few weeks! My lungs filled with air, and I let it out slowly, deflating like a balloon with a slow leak. I poised my hands over the keyboard to write a response but just . . . couldn't. What would I say? It had already been weeks since we'd last e-mailed. Most of my friends texted instead of e-mailing anyway, but texting across the Atlantic Ocean cost way too much. And the truth was . . .

I'd moved, and they'd moved on.

I logged off the computer and sat there for a minute, blinking back tears. Jen hadn't meant to forget me. I was simply out of her orbit now.

I pretended to read Sugar magazine online, but mostly I was staring at the clock, passing the time till I could respectably head to my next class.

Five minutes before class I swung my book bag onto my shoulder and headed down the hall. Someone was stapling flyers to the wall. “Hi, Hazelle.”

“Hullo, Savannah.” She breezed by me, stapling another pink flyer farther down the wall. We had math class together--oh yeah, maths, as the Brits called it--first period. I'd tried to make friends with her; I'd even asked her if she'd like to sit together in lunch, but she'd crisply informed me that she sat at the table with the other members of the newspaper staff.

She didn't bother with small talk now either, but went on stapling down the hall. I glanced at one of the flyers, and one sentence caught my eye right away: Looking for one experienced journalist to join the newspaper staff.

I yanked the flyer off the wall and jammed it into my bag. I was experienced. Wasn't I?

A nub of doubt rose inside me--the kind that popped up, unwelcome, anytime I tried to rationalize something that wasn't exactly true or right.

This time I swallowed it back. I thought back to Jen's e-mail that kind of felt like a polite dismissal. I lived in London now.

It was time to take matters into my own hands.

Asking For Trouble by Sandra Byrd

Title: Asking for Trouble
Author: Sandra Byrd
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers


My synopsis/review:  Savannah and her family have just moved outside of London.  She is in high school and has to try to make new friends, new activities, and her family have to find a new church. 

Savannah, or Savvy as her family calls her, was set to be a reporter for her school paper back home.  This would have been her first year on the paper, but her freshman English teacher highly recommended her.  Unfortunately it is not that easy to get on the paper at Wexler Academy - her new high school.  It isn't even easy to make friends.  Then a position opens up on the paper.

Savvy fibs a little by saying she has experience, but after Jack, the editor, gives her a shot, she fesses up that this was to be her first year.  He is not willing to take the chance on her, as the paper is floundering, but because she is desperate to be a part of something she agrees to deliver the papers around school.  Not really the job that she wants, but she hopes she can make it work for her.

After a little "investigative reporting" she discovers that the students are looking for something a little more on their level and not so "academic".  After some brainstorming, she comes up with the idea of an advice column.  She suggests it to Jack and the newspaper team decide to go for it. 

Through a writing contest, Savvy wins the opportunity to be the writer of the column.  This is kept a secret in case her American way of writing isn't suitable for the British students.  She prays that God will give her wisdom to do a good job.  She soon realizes that God is going to make her "live and learn" the questions and answers that she is expected to answer.

This book is being marketed to ages 9-12.  I think that is appropriate even though Savvy is a little older than that.  It has some good lessons and some good Scripture references.  Savvy realizes that she has pushed God away when they moved - and that when she is at her loneliest is when she needs Him the most. 

I am definitely going to recommend this one to my nieces.

~I was provided this book for review for a First Wild Card Tour by Tyndale.~



Asking for Trouble
Publisher/Publication Date: Tyndale House Publishers, Mar 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4143-2597-2
272 pages
Age recommended: 9-12 years

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