Loveeeeee ( )

Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

In this poetic novel by acclaimed author Sharon Creech, Annie, a twelve-year-old girl, is trying to find out who she is. A lot happens in this short one-hundred-and-eighty-page book.

Annie's mother is pregnant, her grandfather is beginning to forget things, and her friend Max is extremely moody. Annie loves to run, and throughout the book there are "thump, thump, thump" lines where she can hear her heart beat in rhythm with her feet, which are running hard. Hence the title of the book.

In Annie's art class, the students are asked to take an apple and draw a picture of it for one hundred days. At the end of the project the students are to turn in one hundred drawings. There are poems in the book devoted to the one apple.

I love Ms. Creech's writing and admire her poetic style. The characters come alive as if you knew each one of them personally. I love reading books like that; they seem so real. HEARTBEAT is a simple, fun, fast read. ( )

This book is a good example of a realistic novel because Annie is not a real person, but the events that happen to Annie are very much things that happen to many people in this world, such as their mom getting pregnant later in life, and watching their grandpa get older and older, and start dealing with dementia. ( )

This book was a very easy read and would encourage reluctant readers to get reading. It is written in free verse format. The author uses a lot of sound in her writing that gives you a sense of being there when she is running. This is an AR book, 5.0, 2 points. This book has won ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2003) and Americas Book Award for Children's & Young Adult Literature (2003).

This book is written in prose style about a little 12 year old girl and her friend Max. Both enjoy running, and Annie also is dealing with her mothers pregnancy and her aging grandfather. Max and her disagree about running, and she also loves to draw.