Meeting Melanie - Hardcover

Garden, Nancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374349436 ISBN 13: 9780374349431

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2002

Synopsis

A dangerous drama unfolds on a remote Maine island

Almost-twelve-year-old Allie Ward's summer is not looking especially fun-filled. Seal Island, Maine, is a pretty isolated community, and the only other resident kids her age have suddenly decided they don't want to hang around girls anymore. More important, her lobsterman father has injured his back and isn't able to work his usual job. To compensate, Allie's mother and father are trying to set up a business selling pies. Allie doesn't mind helping her parents out, and she wouldn't want to leave the island for anything, but she longs for a friend. Enter Melanie Rochambeau. She and her family are summering on the island in an elegant home that they've just inherited. Allie and Melanie hit it off almost immediately, but their easy alliance is challenged by Melanie's mother, who turns up her nose at socializing with working-class people. And soon Allie finds herself embroiled in a Rochambeau family secret involving Melanie's older sister. The situation escalates into one that could potentially destroy a family, and even endanger two lives.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Garden is the author of many books for children and young adults, including Annie on My Mind and Holly's Secret. She divides her year between Massachusetts and Maine.

From Publishers Weekly

Two girls, one working-class and the other wealthy, become friends in Garden's (Annie on My Mind; Holly's Secret) uncharacteristically simplistic novel. Told from the perspective of 11-year-old Allie Ward, the story takes place over one summer on quaint Seal Island, Maine, where Melanie Rochambeau's father has just inherited his mother's elegant vacation house. Characterizations run very thin, at times approaching stereotype. While old-moneyed Mr. Rochambeau takes after his mother in his respect for the locals, Mrs. Rochambeau is a snob and doesn't want Melanie to play with Allie, even though the girls like each other instantly. Allie's family, on the other hand, is salt of the earth Ma, who cleans the Rochambeau house, is "never so tired that she didn't have a smile on her face or a squeeze or a cuddle for any of [her children]"; lobsterman Daddy always has words of wisdom for his "Sweet Allie." The contrast between the families is thrown into relief when Melanie divulges that her older unwed sister, Mary Scarlett, is pregnant, and rather than encouraging her to marry the "foreign... not suitable" father, Mrs. Rochambeau plans to have the baby adopted; Allie vows to help Mary Scarlett run away. Despite Allie's intelligence and resourcefulness, however, she can't make sense of the mysterious goings-on at an abandoned shack, which most readers will easily connect to a scheme involving Mary Scarlett. There's enough local color to hold the audience, but not enough emotional depth to give the story an afterlife. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0374349436
• ISBN 13: 9780374349431
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208