Tune It Out
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the acclaimed Roll with It comes a moving novel about a girl with a sensory processing disorder who has to find her own voice after her whole world turns upside down.
Lou Montgomery has the voice of an angel, or so her mother tells her and anyone else who will listen. But Lou can only hear the fear in her own voice. She’s never liked crowds or loud noises or even high fives; in fact, she’s terrified of them, which makes her pretty sure there’s something wrong with her.
When Lou crashes their pickup on a dark and snowy road, child services separate the mother-daughter duo. Now she has to start all over again at a fancy private school far away from anything she’s ever known. With help from an outgoing new friend, her aunt and uncle, and the school counselor, she begins to see things differently. A sensory processing disorder isn’t something to be ashamed of, and music might just be the thing that saves Lou—and maybe her mom, too.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A talented singer, 12-year-old Louise sleeps in a truck with her single mother and doesn't attend school, only interacting with others when her mom pressures her to sing at cafes and county fairs, hoping to make it big. Lou can't stand loud noises or being touched, and her mom blames their secretive, peripatetic lifestyle on those "quirks" an undiagnosed sensory processing disorder. But while driving the truck in a snowstorm to pick her mom up from work, Lou gets into an accident, and Child Protective Services sends the "significantly underweight" girl from Tahoe to Nashville and her mom's estranged sister Ginger. Lou is taken aback by an existence in which clean clothes and food are always available, and tentatively embarks on a friendship with a wealthy classmate at her new private school. There is no easy solution to the growing rage Lou feels as she begins to realize the ways in which her mother has let her down, particularly a stubborn refusal to acknowledge and treat the girl's differences. Employing Lou's clear voice and well-drawn relationships between complex characters, Sumner explores the challenges Lou faces as a result of her neuroatypicality and financially insecure past, culminating in an appealing, sensitively told tale. Ages 10 up.
