Spelldown
The Big-Time Dreams of a Small-Town Word Whiz
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Thirteen-year-old Karlene Bridges is the best speller in her family, her hometown, and maybe even all of Shirley County, South Carolina. The trouble is, every time she makes it to the final round of a spelling bee, she chokes. But when Mrs. Harrison, the new Latin teacher, offers to coach her, Karlene's spelling jinx miraculously disappears. The year 1969 is turning out to be her best ever, especially since she develops a surprising crush on her best friend, Billy Ray.
But as soon as Karlene aims to compete in the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D. C., her father's drinking begins to spell trouble. How is a girl supposed to hold her family together, savor her first kiss, and become the best speller in America before the end of eighth grade?
Debut novelist Karon Luddy spells out adolescence with unwavering faith and sass in a novel about big dreams and the people who make them happen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in a folksy South Carolina town in 1968, this heartrending and funny debut novel deftly evokes place, time and character. Karlene, a gutsy eighth-grader determined to win the Shirley County Spelldown, narrates in a charming voice that exudes her love of words. Mrs. Harrison, her new Latin teacher, brings the dead language alive, for Karlene and for readers. The woman volunteers to be her spelling coach and warmly welcomes Karlene into her heart and her home. As the teen spends time in their seemingly perfect household, babysitting for the two Harrison children, Karlene envisions her teacher and loving husband as her "pretend parents." Theirs is a different world from Karlene's: her father's soul has become "trapped in a liquor bottle" and her increasingly dispirited mother labors long days at the mill. In one especially moving scene, the girl hauls a Christmas tree through the woods to her younger twin brothers waiting at home, musing, "the way it looks around here, it's up to me to make the holiday happen." Readers will revel in the heroine's much heralded public victories, yet her private triumphs among them a longed-for first kiss from a kind older boy and her reunion with her father at a treatment center are even more moving and memorable. Peppering her narrative with copious references to '60s songs (Karlene observes that a sad teacher "probably keeps her face in a jar by the door like Eleanor Rigby"), Luddy has composed a resonant, applause-worthy work of fiction. Ages 10-up.
