Sarah DooleyReviews

Livvie’s family has had to move repeatedly because of her out bursts, but she believes that she has a way to get back to a house where they were all happy. This touching novel is narrated by Livvie, a severely autistic 14-year-old girl.

I sort of expected a book about girls named Fella and Zany going on a road trip with their mother's ashes and a dog named Haberdashery to have a lot of humor in it. It definitely did not. This was a sad and sorrowful reflection on death, loss, grief, and all that goes with those things. It was an absolutely wonderful book... just not a funny one.
Fella and Zany (12 and 16) are the daughters of a lesbian couple. Each is the biological daughter of one of their mothers, but they both view both moms as their mothers. But Mama Lacy has died young of cancer. Afterwards, Fella's wealthy, reserved, formal and traditional grandmother, Mrs. Madison, gets custody of her, while Zany stays with Mama Shannon. As the book opens, Zany has broken into the other grandmother's house to steal Mama Lacy's ashes, with the plan of taking them from West Virginia to Asheville, NC during the night and scattering them near their old home in that liberal and eccentric town. She ends up taking Fella (still in her pajamas and bathrobe) and Mrs. Madison's dog, Haberdashery, along as well. Things start going wrong with the plan almost immediately, and continue to go wrong the further they go. But rather than the slapstick humor of crazy events in the middle of the night, they are all wrought with sadness. I shed a lot of tears in this one.
(Oddly, I think Richard Peck or Barbara Park could have told essentially the same story and it would have been hilarious.)

Sasha is a young girl living in foster care. For a long time it was Sasha her brother Michael and her father. The coal mines took her father. Michael is her everything. He tells her that one day they will leave the small town of Caboose. Before that can happen her firefighter brother is killed on the job.
Sasha’s reflex reaction is to run away. Sasha is introduced to poetry. Through this she finds a way to find herself, to deal with those shadows in her soul. This book was so much more than I expected. I thought it would be a simple book with some nice poetry. Instead I found a girl who has lost her way. While in foster care she learns she is related to the neighbors. This story is full of different layers. There are so many things for readers to relate to, loss, death, foster care, finding your way through the hardships of poverty. There are so many things this book can teach. I absolutely loved it.

The sisters kept yelling at each other and making terrible choices that resulted in bad things happening! Maybe it's realistic, but I couldn't take it. There was no relief from the stress.

Set in the late 1990s, a family is torn apart with their mother dies from cancer. Because of restrictive laws, the two mothers were never able to legally marry or adopt each other's children, so the one daughter's biological grandmother fights in court to take her away from her other mother and sister. Now, on the eve of their dead mother's birthday, the older sister comes in the middle of the night to whisk away her younger sister and their mother's ashes so that they can travel to North Carolina to fulfill their mother's last wishes about the scattering of her remains. But their night cannot be any more ill-fated as their money is stolen, their car breaks down, their dog is hit by a car, etc. Will the girls ever make it to Asheville? And will they be able to return back home before anyone notices they are gone?

Told from the point of view of the 12-year-old younger daughter, this book is an emotional read. The whole family is still very much in grief over the death of their mother/daughter/wife. No one is coping particularly well, and bad decisions are made by everyone, including this ill-conceived plan by older sister "Zany" to road trip to North Carolina sans adult supervision and despite every obstacle met. I am a little concerned about recommending this book to young children, especially given the number of risky decisions made by the girls. However, the book does address how these are bad ideas (both by the girls who realize it but persevere anyway and by adults who point out everything that could have gone much worse) and shows at least some negative consequences (e.g., the poor dog getting hit by a car).

There is a lot to digest in this book in terms of heavy topics but Dooley treats everything with respect and consideration. Again, I'm not quite sure that I'd recommend this to very young readers, depending on their maturity level, but I do think it's important read to empathize with what others are going through and to see how far we've come (and still have to go) in terms of LGBT rights.

Sasha has been through SO MUCH TRAMA - disappeared mom, dead dad, dead older brother, disappeared cousin-ish. She's angry and sad and doesn't have coping skills to process it all. When she finds poetry, she finds a glimmer of hope, a path to recovery. She lands in an amazing foster home. This is a heart wrencher.

A family of two moms and their two daughters are split apart after the death of one of the mothers, The oldest of the two daughters instigates a road trip to where they last lived happily to disperse their mother's ashes. Quite a book, with Fella (short for Ophelia), the younger of the two sisters, narrating the disasterous road trip. What is a family is the heart of the story.

After the family trailer burns down, Ember and her family live at a campground. Ember struggles with the loss, especially of her beloved dog Widdershins. She's also struggling with understanding why her best friend Anson set the fire, and whether she should pursue her Wiccan revenge spell.

It was pretty good. It was a fascinating look through the eyes of a young female reader with a mental disorder. She is not any less of a person because of it, and it was fascinating to see her reaction to her family member's reactions and all that. The story was very well done and the reader was very good as well. I enjoyed it.

Sarah Dooley is a teacher for children with special needs, and in her novel Livvie Owen Lived Here, about a fourteen year-old with autism, she thanks her students “who gave [her] this assignment.”
Livvie and her family (including two sisters, Lanie, 11 and Tash, 16), have had to move frequently because of Livvie’s inability to control her outbursts. Her relationship with Lanie is strained, and they often butt heads, but Tash has more of a calming presence for Livvie, even though she seems to struggle internally with her sister’s tantrums and the destruction they bring. When the family receives their latest, Livvie resolves to help her family move back into their old home, which she calls Sun House, despite the fact that it burned down after one of her devastating outbursts.
Warm, bright colors, like those of the Sun House, are soothing to Livvie. She often associates happiness with these colors, and thus fondly remembers the connection she had with their former family pet, Orange Cat. Unfortunately, Orange Cat escaped during one of Livvie’s outbursts and was hit by a car. Thus, much of Livvie’s struggles are her attempts to reconcile her past mistakes and figure out a way her family can live peacefully.
Livvie forms a bond with her latest substitute teacher, Mrs. Rhodes, who happens to have an autistic brother and understand Livvie’s motivations in a way few others can. Livvie Owen Lived Here is a lovely ode to Dooley’s students, and will hopefully be a book that autistic readers and their families can find simpatico characters.

Livvie Owen is a fourteen year-old girl desperately trying to make her family happy and find a place that they can call home while dealing with autism. The story is told through a unique perspective (Livvie’s, that is), shedding light on autism. Readers will feel surprisingly refreshed seeing the world from such a different perspective. Some of the things that Livvie writes about seem unrealistic—like the fact that she wrote the book but cannot read, or some of the large words that she uses—but they add depth to the story and help make her likeable. Livvie struggles with deciphering the emotions of her family as well as her own, and wrestles with questions about change, having autism, and her place in her family. Many of the difficulties Livvie encounters parallel those experienced by other young adults. Dooley’s book could also serve as an educational tool, showing kids not only what the world looks like through the lens of autism, but also why some kids with autism do the things they do. This book is really an eye-opener, and readers will find that they really care for Livvie as they read.

A good book is one that makes you feel for the characters. A good book makes you think differently about people. A good book makes you want to do something - take action based on what you've read.

This is one of those good books. Ember and family lose their trailer home to a fire one summer and end up homeless, living first in a church basement accepting begrudging charitable donations, and moving to a campground. It seems the fire was a warning - the family is Wiccan, an ancient earth religion, which celebrates the elements of earth, wind, fire and water and the power that these have. Ember gets her older brother to take her every Wednesday to the ruins of the trailer, to see what remains, and to untie the knots on a rope in a spell she's casting on the boy she thinks caused the blaze. She grieves for the loss of her dog, amplifying the misery of her current life situation. She takes solace in the lake, and the hope that maybe Widdershins can be found (sorry about the spelling - listened the audiobook).

This story helps readers understand the Wiccan religion, and what it means to be homeless. Are Tarot card readings evil? Why doesn't the father or mother just find a job to help the family's predicament? And why do homeless and/or poor people seem to be fat - shouldn't they be emaciated and starving? This will be a great addition to my library's multicultural collection.

After their trailer home and all their belongings are burned, twelve-year-old Ember and her Wiccan family move to a lakeside campground where Ember's anguish over losing her dog, as well as her friendship with the boy she fears started the fire, stops her from making new friends and moving on.½

Livvie Owen Lived Here is a powerful story of one autistic girl’s journey to find someplace to call home. It was so gut-wrenching at times that it managed to pull on my heartstrings; something that most novels fail to do.

I think this a book that everyone needs to read. Autism is something that isn’t spotlighted in YA a lot, especially for an older character such as Livvie, but this novel is a great portrayal of less than wealthy family that deals with the weight of things that come with her. It sparkles with realism and importance; nothing is dolled up for the pages and autism isn’t prettied for Livvie’s character but I loved every second of it.

And it can be very educational as well. I have several autistic cousins, and while I love all of them very much, Livvie Owen Lived Here has me looking at them with a newfound adoration. Despite her problems, Livvie is smart and she just wants her family to be happy. If this hadn’t been in her point of view, we just would’ve seen the horribly wrong decisions she makes to get her family to happiness. But since we’re in her head, we’re able to read about why she thinks those horribly wrong decisions are perfectly acceptable to her. Things are put into new perspectives in this novel. You’re placed in a completely new mindset, Livvie’s mindset, and it teaches you so much.

Overall, I absolutely loved Livvie Owen Lived Here. Although it’s quick read, it’s very emotionally powerful and raises awareness on a subject that most authors are afraid to touch with a ten-foot-pole. I definitely think this one that everyone needs to pick up!

All Livvie wants is to go back to when things were good. Back when the whistle blew on the paper mill every day at 6 o'clock and they lived in the warm, yellow house and Orange Cat was still alive. But the paper mill's closed and if she can't keep her outbursts under control, her family's going to be evicted again. It's not easy for anyone to deal with change and for Livvie it's a particular struggle because she has autism. But Livvie can't go back, so she's going to have to find a way to move forward.

I quite liked this debut novel about a blue-collar family quietly dealing with inevitable change. It's a thoughtful story and Livvie has a strong voice that'll stick with the reader for some time. I'd try it on fans of The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson, Also Known as Harper by Ann Haywood Leal, and Anything But Typical by Nora Baskins.

More on the blog: http://www.abbythelibrarian.com/2010/08/livvie-owen-lived-here.html

A moving, bittersweet tale reminiscent of Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons set in a West Virginia coal-mining town

When her brother dies in a fire, Sasha Harless has no one left, and nowhere to turn. After her father died in the mines and her mother ran off, he was her last caretaker. They’d always dreamed of leaving Caboose, West Virginia together someday, but instead she’s in foster care, feeling more stuck and broken than ever.

But then Sasha discovers family she didn’t know she had, and she finally has something to hold onto, especially sweet little Mikey, who’s just as broken as she is. Sasha even makes her first friend at school, and is slowly learning to cope with her brother’s death through writing poetry, finding a new way to express herself when spoken words just won’t do. But when tragedy strikes the mine her cousin works in, Sasha fears the worst and takes Mikey and runs, with no plans to return. In this sensitive and poignant portrayal, Sarah Dooley shows us that life, like poetry, doesn’t always take the form you intend.
-summary from goodreads.com