Hook:
"Outside the window the sky is black and the stars are winking at me . I watch the fireflies dancing in the field and realize my birthday is nearly over, and I haven't made my secret birthday wish yet. Mamma says that a wish made on a birthday always comes true. I don't know about that, though. Last year I wished for Kaarlo to stop being so mean to me all the time, but he's still the same mean old Kaarlo.
Still, it can't hurt to try. I think hard but it's an easy wish. I can't tell anyone, not even Wilbert and he's my very best brother. I can't tell him because he'll never understand what it is to be me May Amelia Jackson, the only Jackson girl, and the only girl in Nasel.
I squeeze my eyes tight and wish with my heart that Mamma has a little baby girl so that I can have a sister.
I just made my birthday wish, I tell whisper. But Wilbert and Wendell aren't listening to me. They're to busy snoring." (page 19)
" Everybody knows that I was the first girl to be born here on the Nasel, all the other mammas had boys including my own mamma who had six of them.
Mamma says, I swear to you May Amelia there is something in the very water that breeds boys, you are Simply A Miracle.
My grandmother does not think that I am A Miracle. That is, Pappa's mother, Grandmother Patience.
At breakfast, Pappa says, Your Grandmother Patience will be coming to live with us on account of her getting on in years.
I swear I don't rightly understand why Pappa's letting her live with us, she's fit as can be, I say to Wilbert.
None of us children likes Grandmother patience 'cause she's real mean and doesn't care for children. I don't know why she even had Pappa and Aunt Feenie and Uncle Aarno and Aunt Aili. She always says that children are nothing but devils and demons.
She has a silver-tipped cane that she uses to walk and one tine she whacked Wendell so hard that he had a bruise on his cheek for a whole week and all he'd done was talk back to her. I haven't seen sight of her since I was eight years old even though she only lives in Astoria. That time she yelled at Mamma, said she was no kind of wife to my pappa, didn't know how to do anything right let alone raise seven boys and one scrawny girl, and then she took Mamma's favorite dish which Pappa had brought all the way from Finland and threw it at her and smashed it against the wall. After that Grandmother and pappa had a real big fight and Grandmother Patience hasn't come back until now.
Wilbert tells me Grandmother Patience was poorly named." (page 91 and 92)
Recommendation:
Have you ever been annoyed by anyone in you family? Well, May Amelia was the first girl to be born in the Nasel- a real miracle, everyone says. A lot of times May forgets that she is a girl, living with seven brothers, like when she wears overalls, or helps Wilbert (her best brother) with his fishing. But sometimes her family does treat her like a miracle, and it's just plain maddening, like when Pappa yells at her for staying at the logging camp or keeping her in the house because there's a real live murder on the loose. What May thinks will be the greatest miracle of all is if the baby in Mamma's belly turns out to be a girl. Will May always be their only miracle in the Jackson family, or will the new baby be the little sister she's been hoping for?
May's brothers: Matti is eighteen. Kaarlo is seventeen and a half and is really May's cousin but I guess he is sort of a brother. Isaiah is sixteen. Wendell is fifteen. Alvin is fourteen. Ivan is fourteen too. He is Alvin's twin and they look as alike as two summer blackberries. Only May and Wilbert can tell them apart, even Mamma has trouble telling them apart. Wilbert is thirteen and he is May's best brother.
If you don't go, you can't return.
-Finnish proverb
Title: Our Only May Amelia
Author: Jennifer L. Holm
Genre: Historical Fiction
Blog by: Michelle D.
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