Dizzy - Softcover

Cassidy, Cathy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142404748 ISBN 13: 9780142404744

Publisher: Puffin Books, 2005

Synopsis

What would it be like to walk into your living room and see acomplete stranger who says she's your mother? Dizzy hasn't seen Storm since she walked out on her and her dad eight years ago, but here she is, a hippie-crunchy earth mother, come to celebrate Dizzy's twelfth birthday and to convince Dizzy's dad to let her come away for the summer. A dream is coming true right before Dizzy's eyes and as the memories start flooding back, Dizzy knows she wants to spend as much time with her mum as she can. So the two steal off before dawn into the wild world of communes, hippies, out-door festivals, dirty fingernails and fun!

As the weeks pass, Dizzy starts to feel things she's never felt before. She meets Finn, who gives her her first kiss-and Mouse, who's like the little brother she never had. This life is so different from the one back at home. Which life is the right one for Dizzy? Not since Sharon Creech has such a warm, fresh, wonderful voice emerged for this age group. Viking is proud to welcome the talented voice of Cathy Cassidy.

About this title

About the Author:

Cathy Cassidy has been writing ever since she can remember. She went to art school in Liverpool, England, before getting a job as fiction editor at a British teen mag–where she loved every minute of it! Later, she got married and had a big party with fireworks and a chocolate wedding cake, before switching careers to become an art teacher. Several years and two children later, a friend talked Cathy into finishing a children's novel she'd started... and this is the result!

Cathy lives in south-west Scotland with her husband Liam, two children, three cats, two rabbits, and a skinny, hairy dog named Kelpie, who was the model for Leggit in Dizzy. She still teaches art two days a week and writes the problem page for a British teen magazine. You can find out more about Cathy by checking out her website and watch out for her next book, Indigo Blue.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-8–When 12-year-old Dizzy is kidnapped by her hippie mother, whom she hasn't seen or heard from in eight years, she thinks that flighty Storm has her father's approval to take her to a solstice festival in Scotland where he will join them. As the weeks go by, Dizzy increasingly dislikes sleeping in a teepee, eating moldy bread, going without hot water, singing for handouts in town, and narrowly escaping arrest. Storm shoves her off on her friend Tess, and Dizzy realizes that Storm isn't the mother she had been wishing for. Dizzy and Tess's son bond and look after the neglected son of Storm's boyfriend. Readers will empathize with the protagonist as she fears that her father has abandoned her, and it takes a serious accident to right things. The eclectic characters and their lifestyle are presented as captivating yet questionable in the girl's first-person narrative, and the well-developed plot fosters concern for Dizzy from the beginning. A unique, satisfying story.–Jean Gaffney, Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library, Miamisburg, OH
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About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0142404748
• ISBN 13: 9780142404744
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272