What is your destiny for this summer?

Are you destined to go on a vacation with your family? Will you take the time to hang out with friends? Will you have the chance to sleep in and not worry about the alarm clock? My summer destiny is all about books, and that’s a GOOD thing!

Finally I have the time to read for long stretches of time and catch up on the books I on my “have to read list”. I brought a big pile home for the summer. I don’t know if I’ll get to all the books in my piles, but I’ll sure give it a try.Sometimes there is a hidden power that makes me pick up one book before another. I’ve learned to trust that inner voice and listen to it. That’s why I picked up Destiny Rewritten first.

 

 Destiny Rewritten by Kathryn Fitzmaurice seemed like the obvious choice in this time of change. You can see in the background of the photo the world we’ve been living in this school year. Construction! The old school is going to be torn down, and in August we’ll be moving into the new school. In fact, the piece of wall hanging off, is part of the wall to our old library, and the windows up above in the new building is our new library.

Kathryn sent me this signed copy a few weeks ago. I set it aside because I wanted to have the time to savor it. I first heard about Kathryn when I read her book, The Year the Swallows Came Early. I loved it from paragraph one. Last year her novel, A Diamond in the Desert captured the Japanese-American experience in the internment camps in California during the 1940’s and I made a book trailer about the book. Yes, I guess you could say I’m a fan of Kathryn Fitzmaurice.

Sometimes fans get presents, and that’s what I got! A signed copy from Kathryn! If you are a fan of poetry, realistic or romance fiction, I urge you to add this book to your summer reading list. It won’t let you down.

Destiny Rewritten is the story of 11 year old Emily, who really, really dislikes poetry. Not a problem, right? A lot of kids don’t like poetry. No big deal. Wrong!

When your mother is a poet, is an English professor at the local university, and names you Emily Elizabeth after her favorite poet Emily Dickinson, you are supposed to like poetry. Except, not this Emily. She likes romance fiction and writes letters to to the romance writer, Danielle Steele, hoping she will write back and help her with her problems.

Because she has a very big problem. Is she destined to be a poet? If so, why can’t she even write a simple line of poetry without feeling like someone asked her to solve the problems of mankind?

To make matters more complicated, her mother is a bit of a free-spirit  who didn’t document all those special moments of Emily’s childhood in a baby book like the other moms. Instead, the highlights were written in her rare copy of the The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, purchased the day before Emily was born. Was that chance? Was it kismit?

Chapter One

Things (that seemed to have nothing to do with me, but did, and) that changed my life:

“My destiny was decided in a secondhand bookstore the day before I was born when my mother, Isabella, found a book of poems. She’d been searching for a name for me, something that would set my life’s direction. ….Then, there is was, a first edition of Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson…..”She will be named Emily, and she will be a poet,” my mother declared.”

 A MAJOR crisis strikes when the book is lost. Emily’s mother thinks it’s all part of her destiny, but Emily will have none of that type of thinking. She’s more pragmatic than her mother and needs answers to important questions. For example she wants the answers to the identity of her father. Her mother won’t tell her outright because she thinks Emily will find out when the time is right. Emily wants to know whether it’s okay to like romance fiction and happy endings more than gloomy poetry by a dead poet.

I loved every page in Destiny Rewritten and am glad I saved reading it for a special time. It authentically captures the topsy-turvy feelings middle grade girls. It seemed like the perfect book to close my school year. My own destiny is a bit in limbo as we close down one school, pack up and prepare for a move to a new school.  Yet, I have a feeling that September will open a happy chapter in a new library adventure. In the meantime, I’ll be reading, and reading, and reading!

You can find a copy of Destiny Rewritten by Kathryn Fitzmaurice at your local library or bookstore. In the fall, it will be located in our Realistic Fiction section.

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Have you ever thought about your destiny?

Is it different than what others thought?

Have you ever done something that didn’t make sense at the time, and then seemed absolutely perfect later on?

Leave a comment and let me know!