"Margaret, I love you," Sherman Jenson whispered loudly from his porch across our front yards the first time I slept on my porch during summer vacation.

I lay still. My face and body were lower than the windowsill. From next door, Sherman must have seen me come out. My chest swelled with pressure. My heart was too full.

The Summer Sherman Loved Me is an appealing, slice-of-life story of a young girl's twelfth summer during the early 1960s. Margaret is on the verge of adolescence with all its attendant contradictions and emotions. She is not quite sure how to behave when Sherman, her next door neighbor, professes his love for her. At the same time she is trying to take her first unsure steps into young adulthood—and away from her mother. Sprinkled throughout are laugh-out-loud scenes of family life in suburbia.

It is hard to believe that this is Jane St. Anthony’s first book—she writes like a seasoned professional. The characters are imminently believable, the scenes so vivid and authentic you feel as if you could actually step into them.

The teachers and students who reviewed the book were in unanimous agreement: The Summer Sherman Loved Me is one the most well-crafted, enjoyable, middle-grade novels they have read.

Highly recommended. District-wide purchase strongly encouraged.

Reviewed by the teachers at Education Oasis
©2006 Education Oasis http://www.educationoasis.com