Not Quite a Stranger - Hardcover

Rodowsky, Colby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374355487 ISBN 13: 9780374355487

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2003

Synopsis

A girl discovers she has a half brother

Charlotte Flannigan (Tottie, for short) leads a conventional life in a conventional family. Her father is a well-respected pediatrician, her mother a popular newspaper columnist, and her younger brother a talkative but otherwise okay kid. But on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, Tottie’s comfortable life is threatened when the doorbell rings. She answers it to find a teenage boy, who looks eerily like her father, standing there. A stranger, but not quite a stranger. His name is Zachary Pearce, and he is her father's – and not her mother's - son.

Told through the alternating perspectives of Tottie and Zach, Colby Rodowsky's novel explores the ramifications of a sudden change in the makeup of a family. Fear, resentment, desperation, and potential for love all surface in this honest and heartfelt story.

About this title

About the Author

Colby Rodowsky is the author of numerous books for children and young adults, including Clay. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Reviews

Gr. 5-9. When 13-year-old Tottie Flannigan opens the door to Zach, a teen with a striking resemblance to her father, she hopes he's just "some distant cousin." But Zach is Tottie's half-brother, the result of a brief affair that her father, David, had before he met Tottie's mother. David never knew that Zach's mother, Susan, had not given Zach up for adoption, as they had agreed. Now Susan is dead, and Zach has only his father, a stranger, to turn to. In alternating chapters, Zach and Tottie describe their roiling emotions as Zach becomes part of the Flannigan household. With precision and gentle humor, Rodowsky captures the family's subtle dynamics, while touching on a rare subject in children's books. A few questions may nag readers: for example, why didn't Susan contact David before her death? But readers will connect with Zach's bewildered grief and with Tottie's clearly articulated pain and sense of betrayal as she glimpses her father's secrets and regrets and realizes that the neat outlines that shaped her family must be redrawn. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374355487
• ISBN 13: 9780374355487
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192