Introducing . . . Sasha Abramowitz - Hardcover

Halpern, Sue

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374384320 ISBN 13: 9780374384326

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2005

Synopsis

I’m wild about Sasha . . . You’ll like her, too.” Gregory Maguire

Meet Sasha Abramowitz: smart, funny, resourceful. Aspiring writer and pastry chef. Good listener (usually), good talker (when she feels like it), good friend (most of the time). Good sister? Well, that’s more complicated. You see, her brother has Tourette’s syndrome, which is really his problem, but in a way it’s Sasha’s, too (he can be pretty embarrassing at times). Let’s just say she’s working on it. Anyway, he’s away at a special school (until a fire sends the students home, unexpectedly). But with her baseball-loving professor dad, a mom who teaches neuroscience, a babysitter who’s the star shortstop for the Krieger Cats and doubles as a magician and card trickster, an ex-babysitter who becomes her substitute teacher, and an onagain-off-again best friend, Sasha is not alone. As she struggles with changing friendships and feelings about her older brother, learns her lines for her part in Cheaper by the Dozen, gets to know James, the quiet boy who plays opposite her, and helps the doctors solve a medical mystery, she comes to see herselfand her life in a different light.

In this original novel, Sasha tells her story, complete with footnotes, card tricks, appendixes, and all her best vocabulary words, with brio.

About this title

About the Author

Sue Halpern is the author of a novel for adults, The Book of Hard Things, as well as two nonfiction books. This is her first book for young readers. She lives in Ripton, Vermont.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Introducing . . . Sasha Abramowitz Call me . . . Sasha. Sasha Abramowitz. That's my name, pretty much. Officially it's Sasha Marie Curie Abramowitz, but I think it's weird having someone else's name sitting right in the middle of my own, even if it is the name of the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only one to win it twice. (And get this, Marie Curie was married to a man who also won a Nobel Prize, and they had a daughter who won a Nobel Prize, and that daughter married a man who won a Nobel Prize. So don't you just wonder how her other kid, the only member of the family not to win a Nobel Prize, felt? I'll bet nobody has her name parked in the middle of theirs.)   My parents thought it would be inspirational, adding Marie Curie's name to mine, as if somehow her greatness would rub off on me. When I used to complain, my father would shake his head regretfully and say, "You know, Sasha, we came very close to giving you her maiden name, too, but there just wasn't room enough on the birth certificate." I guess you have to be thankful for the little things. Like not being named Sasha Marie Sklodowska Curie Abramowitz.   Though it's probably too early to say for sure, I don't think their plan is working, because even though I'm only eleven, I kind of doubt I'm going to grow up to be a chemist (Marie Curie's Nobel Prize #1) or a physicist (Nobel Prize #2). I want to be a writer. A writer and, maybe, a pastry chef. Personally, I think they should have given a Nobel Prize to the person who discovered double fudge brownies. The kind without nuts. Putting nuts in brownies was a very bad idea and, not to be too mean, I truly hope the person who came up with it lived to regret it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0374384320
• ISBN 13: 9780374384326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288