"Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool

I apologize for yet ANOTHER delay in posting. Last week and this week has been ROUGH. Caelynn started getting sick last Monday and by Tuesday was running a fever pretty consistently. If it went over 99.5, we had a VERY cranky patient on our hands. And by "we" I mean "me". She would get inconsolable and I'd have to sit with her and calm her down and get her to rest and try to get her fever down. When she was better, I tried to pack in all of the normal housework, plus take care of Matty. By the end of the week, she was FINALLY getting better but Matty started with the fever and Friday night I came down with it. This week has been better - Caelynn is feeling much better, Matty's little case of the cold/fever was over in about two days, but I've been struggling with congestion, coughing...and the worst part is the sore throat. During the day I was fine but I'd wake up in the middle of the night with such horrid pain that it would keep me up. 

Anyway, such is life...but that is why I haven't been blogging much lately. When I feel okay, I'm trying to get the daily chores done, as well as trying to get Matthew to just WALK already. More on that later.

Anyhow, my first "read" of the month is an awesome book I stumbled upon called Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. Once again, I went with an adolescent book but it truly is marvelous. One of my little nerdy obsessions is the dream of collecting and owning every single Caldecott and Newbery Award winner/Honor winner since both awards originated back in the early 1900s. I have a running list of award winners and highlight which ones I own. This book won the award for 2011. :-) So, when I received a Barnes & Noble gift card from my hubby for my birthday, I knew what I wanted to get. :-) This book DOES NOT disappoint.

It is a historical fiction book, set back in the time period of 1936 in a small town of Manifest, Kansas. The main character is a young girl named Abilene who is shipped to this town, knowing NO ONE, by her father who works for the railroad and can no longer keep her with him while he works. As Abilene tries to piece together why her father sent her to this town...and piece together who her dad really was before she came along, she falls in love with the diverse people that make up Manifest. The story jumps between the activities of 1936 and 1917-18. When Abilene meets the "local diviner" and has to work for her to pay off a debt, Abilene begins to learn a history of a people she thought she'd never care about. 

This book is AWESOME. Very clean, very easy to read, but also keeps you on your toes as you try to remember who everyone is and keep in context what they were back in 1917 and who they are now in 1936. Fantastic story with some great morals. Also ingeniously weaves historical facts into the story so that it educates at the same time. Definitely deserving of the Newbery Award, in my book! 342 pages