A Summer to Die (1977)

Holy shit... my sister and I loved this book. So tragic and weird for a fourth grader to be reading. Two things I remember: The family sings the song, "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" and I've never heard that sung in real life AND it was the first time I read the word "taut"... it was used during a birth scene and I've disliked that word (like moist and mucuous) from that point on. ( )

Lowry, Lois. A Summer to Die. 2007.

Meg and Molly are forced to share a room when their father moves them to the countryside where he can peacefully finish his book. One morning, Molly is rushed to the hospital and endures test after test, Meg realizes that Molly is much sicker than she has been told and Meg now must find a way to help her sister know that she really does love her.

Meg is the narrator of A Summer to Die and describes to readers the most difficult summer of her life. In the first two page Meg immediately introduces readers to she and her sister's, Molly, differences. "It was Molly who drew the line....If I had tried, it would have been a mess, a wavy line and off center. But Molly is very neat..."

Awards:
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book
Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee ( )

In this poignant novel of a young girl's first experience with the death, Lois Lowry manages to steer away from being overly maudlin and instead presents a heartfelt picture of a close knit family dealing with the grief of terminal illness. Meg, the younger sister who has always felt inferior to her older sister Molly, is just coming to terms with her jealousy of Molly when Molly is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Meg learns to deal with her grief by finding who she is outside of her family - in her photography and her friendships. Ultimately, Meg comes through her ordeal changed and matured - "Nothing will be the same, ever, without Molly. But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it." ( )

The main character Meg and her sister Molly, older by the way are total opposites. Meg very studious and loves photography joins her neighbor in building a darkroom. Molly, popular becomes ill and is dying doesn’t seem to bring the siblings together.

A gift from Amy! Thank you Amy! I finished reading this at 2:30am this morning when I couldn't sleep.I almost didn't want to read this because it is like a little dandelion poof of a book, it is so super small I was like, I'll blink and I'll miss it! What if I hurt it! I'd never read it before because as a kid I was snotty about the kill-me-now melodramas of Lurlene McDaniel and ilk. (Please see Somewhere Between YA Lit and Death.) However, this meant I overlooked a lot.The handling of these experiences of death is so elegant here. I liked how most of the biggest information is told not through first-person dialogue (declaration, reaction) but by simple narrative statements, sometimes right in the middle of a chapter. The news itself is important and dramatic enough to make impact in a few sentences. And I liked how once it was clear Molly was dying, her disease still wasn't named for a while -- this isn't a book about leukemia, it's a book about Meg and Molly and their family and neighborhood.The jaw-drop factor came from the birth scene, for which I am giving the book an extra eleventy stars though GoodReads only shows 5. It is just... it is just. The detail is incredible, and everything that is said couldn't be more perfect. The symbolism of this entire subplot is perfect, but this is a 100% perfect chapter of book.The ending is also perfect: not just leaving us with a meaningful moment in Meg's connection to her sister, but viewing Meg having a personal lesson that is just as important. ( )