Across the Pond
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
From the author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost comes a heartwarming, “emotionally perceptive” (Kirkus Reviews) story about new beginnings, burgeoning friendships, and finding your flock.
Callie can’t wait for her new life to start. After a major friendship breakup in San Diego, moving overseas to Scotland gives her the perfect chance to reinvent herself. On top of that, she’s going to live in a real-life castle!
But as romantic as life in a castle sounds, the reality is a little less comfortable: it’s run-down, freezing, and crawling with critters. Plus, starting off on the wrong foot with the gardener’s granddaughter doesn’t help her nerves about making new friends. So she comes up with the perfect solution: she’ll be homeschooled. Her parents agree, on one condition: she has to participate in a social activity.
Inspired by a journal that she finds hidden in her bedroom, Callie decides to join a birding club. Sure, it sounds unusual, but at least it’s not sports or performing. But when she clashes with the club leader, she risks losing a set of friends all over again. Will she ever be able to find her flock and make this strange new place feel like home?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventh grader Callie, who is white, can't wait to trade her "small" San Diego existence for life in the sprawling Scottish castle her parents have inherited from Lady Whittington-Spence, a noblewoman from whom they once rented a cottage on the grounds. Callie's life in Scotland is far from perfect, however: the castle is badly in need of repair, and the kids at her new school seem no different from the classmates who turned against her at home. She begs to be homeschooled, but her parents will only agree if she chooses a social activity. Callie opts to join a local bird-watching club and, despite the disappointing club's sexist leader and obnoxious all-boy membership, develops a passion for birds. She also connects with two kindred spirits—club member Raj, who is of Indian descent, and Sid, the strawberry-blond granddaughter of her parents' landscaper—and finds the diary of Pippa Spence, which details her evacuation to the Highlands during WWII and offers insight into the social nature of starlings. McCullough (We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire), who lived in a Scottish castle as a young child, writes with compassion and knowledge as she traces Callie's ups and downs in a new country alongside her burgeoning, awkwardly won knowledge of friendship and self. Ages 10–up.
