Bound To Stay Bound

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School Library Journal - 05/01/2012 Gr 4–6—Ever since the death of her beloved grandmother, 11-year-old Stella has battled to maintain a sense of stability, to "clutch hold" to the spinning Earth. She explains that an unknown father and a terminally irresponsible mother have made her "personal gravity" "a little weak" and left her feeling rootless. Her anxiety is just beginning to lessen now that she shares a Cape Cod home with her taciturn Great-Aunt Louise and a foster girl named Angel whom Stella considers like "a cactus…all spines." Pennypacker beautifully illuminates Stella's physical experience with vivid, unfussy prose, allowing readers to feel her nervousness and longing and her vigorous commitment to cleanliness and order (she even identifies a folder of hints from Heloise as her most precious possession). When Louise dies suddenly, Stella and Angel secretly bury the body in order to stay in her house, managing the vacation cottage colony next door and surviving on tourists' leftovers, in hopes of buying time for each girl's desired caregiver to provide a suitable home. The book effectively evokes the gritty, sun-bleached textures and salt breezes of its seaside setting, a vacationlike contrast to the strenuous, desperate independence of the two girls. The understanding and emotional bond that grows between them develops with believable fluctuations and a light touch, as does the suspense of how long two kids can continue alone without being caught or getting a ride to the grocery store. Pennypacker's marvelously tactile writing animates Stella's narration and brings both engaging, resilient, and resourceful characters to life.—Robbin E. Friedman, Chappaqua, NY - Copyright 2012 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 06/01/2012 Since her mom left her again, eleven-year-old Stella has been taken in by her elderly great aunt, Louise, who manages vacation cottages on Cape Cod. Louise has also taken in a foster child, a girl Stella’s age named Angel, to keep Stella company; unfortunately, the two don’t get along. When Louise unexpectedly dies at home, Stella and Angel, determined to avoid relocation, follow a daring strategy: they bury Louise in the garden, tell people that Louise is sick and laid up with a broken ankle, and do all the cottage caretaking themselves. Together, the girls manage to keep the ruse going for quite a while until Stella, having convinced her mom to come back to her, finally decides the time has come to tell the truth. There is a fair amount of contrivance to both the plot and the characters here; it’s pretty unbelievable, for example, that not one adult sees through the girls’ lies about Louise. Still, many kids will be sucked in by the details of the girls’ survival on their own as they deal with Louise’s corpse, forage food left by the cottagers, and tackle adult work. Stella is a sympathetic character; her longing for predictability and order from a mother who can’t provide that and Stella’s consequent self-blame are believable and affecting: “My mother hadn’t abandoned me. I just hadn’t gotten in the car before she left that last time. I should have seen she was getting ready to veer off, and gotten in the car.” Pack this for a summer vacation read (or readaloud), or hand it to fans of “kids on their own” books like Rose’s May B. (BCCB 2/12). JH - Copyright 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 05/15/2012 Abandoned by her mother, 11-year-old Stella now lives on Cape Cod with her great-aunt Louise, who has taken in another foster child, Angel, as well. When Louise dies suddenly, the two girls bury her body in the garden and attempt to hide her death, fearing what will happen to them. Smart and diligent, if not friendly toward each other, the two girls form an uneasy alliance that gradually becomes a more lasting bond as they work together to hide their secret. Most memorable for the vivid scene in which the girls find Louise’s body, this first-person novel is written from Stella’s point of view. Though events strain credibility at times, the dialogue is convincing and the narrative drive is strong. The attractive book jacket, portraying two girls at the seaside, makes the novel look lighter than perhaps it should, given that Pennypacker’s fans connect her with the Clementine books and the series reviving Jeff Brown’s Flat Stanley, both for younger readers. - Copyright 2012 Booklist.

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