No Matter the Distance
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An unexpected animal companion helps a girl with cystic fibrosis learn to write her own story in this captivating novel in verse by award-winning author and disabled activist Cindy Baldwin.
Penny Rooney has cystic fibrosis, which means she has to do breathing treatments to help her lungs work. Some days, it seems like her CF is the only thing Penny knows about herself for sure.
From her point of view, everyone around her can make sense of their place in the world. So why can’t Penny even begin to write a poem about herself for school?
Then during spring break Penny spots something impossible in the creek behind her house: a dolphin, far from its home. Penny names the dolphin Rose and feels an immediate bond, since the dolphin is also sick.
But as Penny’s CF worsens, she realizes that Rose needs to return to her pod to get better. Will Penny be able to help guide Rose back to the ocean, even if it means losing her friend?
This heartwarming story, which marks the first time an author with cystic fibrosis is writing a protagonist with CF, will transport readers into a world full of friendship, family, and powerful self-discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Baldwin (The Stars of Whistling Ridge) pulls from her own experience with cystic fibrosis, as outlined in an author's note, to construct an insightful telling of a tween living with CF via affecting free-verse poems. Eleven-year-old Penny Rooney can't believe her eyes when she spots a dolphin in her North Carolina backyard creek. But after Penny learns her best friend Cricket is moving away and she experiences her worst CF flare in years, her passive interest in the visiting dolphin, which she names Rose, develops into an emotional, psychic bond, through which she and the dolphin share mental images of their experiences. When experts from the nearby Duke University marine biology station come to investigate the dolphin's appearance, they reveal that Rose is ill and must either return to the ocean or risk further health complications. As Penny wrestles with devastating farewells to both Cricket and Rose, she struggles with worsening flare-ups. Penny's challenges with loneliness and letting go while managing CF are sincerely detailed, potently centering specific accounts of the daily realities of a girl living with a chronic illness, and how those experiences shape the world around her. Characters cue as white. Ages 8–12.
