Description:
What would you do if you were about to lose your best friend ... forever?
Grace Marshall is eleven years old. She's curious and creative and dreams of becoming a magician called Grace the Amazing!
Grace's only friend is her art teacher, Pamela. When she discovers that Pamela is ill, the fragile certainties Grace relies on threaten to slip away. On her mission to find a cure for Pamela using miraculous magic, Grace asks the big questions about life, love, and friendship.
A sensitive story filled with joy, emotion, and special bonds that last a lifetime.
Amazing Grace performed by Rachel Mason.
Brief description:
Aleesah Darlison is an award-winning author of over sixty-five books for children. She is known for her books that champion the cause of animals and the environment and for her stories that empower children. She has won or been shortlisted for many awards including the WAYBRA Awards, the Book Excellence Awards, the Environment Award for Children's Literature, the CBCA Awards, and the Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards. Find out more at: AleesahDarlison.com.
Review Quotes:
"Eleven-year-old Grace is a loner, so angry and afraid that her classmates may dislike her that the isolation she dreads becomes her everyday reality. A larger, more immediate problem is that Pamela, Grace's current "best friend" (actually her supportive art teacher at school), is dying of cancer. No longer teaching, Pamela welcomes home visits from Grace, who struggles to be supportive while quietly seeking some kind of magic that will change Pamela's fate. Grace feels waves of love for her hardworking mother, but she sees her as an adversary more often than a supporter or a role model. Recognizing that Grace needs help, her mother arranges for her to see a psychologist, a move that Grace fiercely opposes until an attitude shift allows her to make gradual progress. As she prepares for the inevitable loss of her beloved teacher, Grace begins to recognize and foster possible new friendships around her. Written from Grace's viewpoint, the first-person narrative is honest, unflinching, and completely engaging. Grace is portrayed as bright and courageous but inclined to follow her emotions more than reason and focus on her hopes more than reality. Darlison, an Australian writer, packs a touching story into a relatively brief, yet highly accessible chapter book."
-- "Booklist"