Verwandte Artikel zu The Firefly Summer

The Firefly Summer - Hardcover

Matson, Morgan

 
9781534493353: The Firefly Summer
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1534493352 ISBN 13: 9781534493353
Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Three starred reviews!
“Heartfelt and hilarious, witty and wise, with indelible characters and laugh-out-loud humor. A fantastic read for any season of the year.” —Stuart Gibbs, New York Times bestselling author

In New York Times bestselling author Morgan Matson’s middle grade debut “brimming with heart, summer nostalgia, and a bit of mystery” (Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author), a young girl gets to know her mom’s side of the family and hunts for hidden treasure over the course of one chaotic summer.

For as long as Ryanna Stuart can remember, her summers have been spent with her father and his new wife. Just the three of them, structured, planned, and quiet. But this summer is different. This summer, she’s received a letter from her grandparents—grandparents neither she nor her dad have spoken to since her mom’s death—inviting her to stay with them at an old summer camp in the Poconos.

Ryanna accepts. She wants to learn about her mom. She wants to uncover the mystery of why her father hasn’t spoken to her grandparents all these years. She’s even looking forward to a quiet summer by the lake. But what she finds are relatives…so many relatives! Aunts and uncles and cousins upon cousins—a motley, rambunctious crew of kids and eccentric, unconventional adults. People who have memories of her mom from when she was Ryanna’s age, clues to her past like a treasure map. Ryanna even finds an actual, real-life treasure map!

Over the course of one unforgettable summer—filled with s’mores and swimming, adventure and fun, and even a decades-old mystery to solve—Ryanna discovers a whole new side of herself and that, sometimes, the last place you expected to be is the place where you really belong.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Morgan Matson is the New York Times bestselling author of six books for teens, including Since You’ve Been Gone and Save the Date, and the middle grade novel The Firefly Summer. She lives in Los Angeles but spends part of every summer in the Pocono Mountains. Visit her at MorganMatson.com.

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Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1
I could tell something was wrong the second I came downstairs.

First of all, my dad was sitting at the kitchen table.

I know for most people, this might not be weird. Normal dads probably sit at kitchen tables all the time.

But we live in Los Angeles, and my dad is a writer—he writes screenplays. Not just everything the actors say—all the action and settings and everything else that happens in a movie has to be written down too. (Not everyone knows this. Nana, my dad’s mom, still thinks that the actors make up their own lines, no matter how many times my dad tells her otherwise.) He also used to direct movies, until his last one did so badly that now he’s in movie jail, and when we go on hikes, producers pretend they don’t see him when he waves.

But because of this, my dad was normally always busy writing something, and always in motion—pacing around our pool as he tried to figure out a story problem, or working in his office, or in meetings. He was almost never just sitting still at home. So right away, I knew something was up.

“What’s up?” I asked as I came into the kitchen.

I’d been upstairs reading, which was pretty much what I’d been doing since school let out last week. I’d managed to make it through the sixth grade, even though I barely passed PE. (My PE teacher didn’t seem to get that some people can climb ropes and some people can’t. And that no amount of encouraging me to do it would magically give me the ability as I spun in circles a few inches off the ground and everyone snickered.)

I’d been deep into a mystery—my favorite type of book to read. My current favorite series was Miss Terry’s Case Files, where the heroine, Terry Turner, is a seventh-grade detective who people hire to get to the bottom of things. Whenever I was reading those books, I couldn’t help wishing that I, too, lived in a small town in Vermont with lots of mysteries. Stupid Los Angeles had a lot of private detectives already, so nobody needed to turn to middle schoolers to solve their crimes.

“Why aren’t you working?” I asked my dad.

“I want to talk to you about something,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, sitting across from him, studying his expression and noticing that he looked pale. I frowned. “Are you remembering to take your B-12?”

“Ryanna,” my dad said, shaking his head. “Keeping track of vitamins is supposed to be my job. I should be asking you that.”

“Of course I’m taking all my vitamins. Are you taking your B-12?”

My dad sighed. “No.”

I nodded, satisfied, and headed to the cabinet, where I pulled the white bottle down. I knew most of my friends would not have any idea if their dad was taking his vitamins, and would probably be alarmed that this was something they were supposed to keep track of.

But it had been just my dad and me, ever since my mother died when I was three.

I’d basically grown up on movie sets with my dad all over the world. I loved everything about being on set—getting snacks at craft services (aka “crafty”), hanging out in the hair-and-makeup trailer and learning all the best gossip, the friends I’d make with the child actors, who were usually the only other kids around.

But mostly what I loved was that a movie set was a tidy, orderly universe. The day’s schedule was printed every morning and handed out—and it told you everything. The shot list and the time the sun would be coming up and setting. The times that different crew and actors would be arriving. When lunch would be and what we were having. While there were often a lot of surprises that cropped up while making a movie, the basic structure of the day was never in question. Everyone had a job, and if there was ever an issue, there were always lots of production assistants with walkie-talkies who could answer any questions for you.

But especially when my dad was directing, he was the one who was responsible for knowing everything, which meant it became my job to make sure that he was eating and drinking water and remembering to call Nana back so she wouldn’t panic and call his agent over and over again. When I started middle school, my dad said that he wanted to be home more, and we hadn’t spent much time on set since. But some habits were hard to break.

I handed him his vitamins. “Here.”

“Thanks. But I do need to talk to you, Ry. This is serious.”

“Okay,” I said, starting to get worried I was in trouble. But we’d already gotten my report card, which was fine except for the PE grade. “Is everything okay with Ginger?”

Ginger was my stepmother—she and my dad got married eight months ago in Ojai, which is a town two hours outside Los Angeles. (It’s pronounced “oh hi,” and my dad and Ginger made shirts to go in everyone’s welcome bags that read OJAI THERE, WELCOME TO THE WEDDING!)

They’d only dated for about a year before they got married, but it hadn’t come as a surprise to me. Dr. Ginger Kang was my pediatrician, and for once my dad came to my appointment, not my babysitter, and I watched them get googly eyes at each other right there in the office. They were talking so long that I finally left and went out into the waiting room to read an old issue of Highlights. (I still enjoyed the “What’s wrong with this picture?” puzzles, after all.)

And by the time my dad came to get me, with a dazed look on his face, I was pretty sure I knew where it was going.

I felt like everyone—my dad; my teachers; my old therapist, Dr. Wendy—had been expecting me to have a harder time with Ginger joining our family. But while it was definitely different, it mostly felt like things were pretty much the same, just with some added improvements. It helped that we moved into a new house right before the wedding so that, according to my dad, we could all start fresh as a family. I was thrilled because my new room had a window seat, something that I’d wanted ever since I’d read The Mystery of the Haunted Homestead, where someone finds a dead body in one. (When we moved in, there was nothing but dust bunnies in mine. I checked.)

And despite some small bumps along the way—Ginger organized the spice rack in a way I hated and kept changing back (she told me that eleven-year-olds shouldn’t have opinions about the spice rack)—things were definitely better now. My dad laughed more, there were plants all over the house, and we now had a cat, Cumberbatch, who spent all his time sleeping in sunbeams except when he woke up to yowl at us for food. Ginger had insomnia, so she was always online shopping late at night, which meant that clothes she’d picked out for me were constantly showing up (even if Ginger usually had very little memory of buying them). But even Insomnia Ginger had great taste, and when the packages arrived, we’d do fashion shows and try-ons in my room. She was great at braiding hair; she saw kids all day, so she knew about the cool sneaker trends; and she’d taught me about stuff like leave-in conditioner.

And best of all, she didn’t try to be my mom, or take over my life. It was like she understood it had just been me and my dad for a long time, and she was going to ease in rather than barge in. It had been so drama-free with Ginger that it made me wonder if all the fairy tales with evil stepmothers had been lying.

“Everything’s fine with Ginger,” my dad assured me.
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Verlag
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1534493352
ISBN 13 
9781534493353
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande