Ava and Pip

Ava and Pip is a diary format. Every word is from Ava Wren's diary. She is an energetic, talkative, extroverted 10 year old with a gift for language beyond her years. Her sister Pip is calm, quiet, and painfully shy. Ava takes it upon herself to help Pip get over he shyness.
In the course of events, Ava writes a story and submits it to a contest in which the villain of the story is Bea - a real girl at the girl's school. And Bea turns out to be a really nice girl, totally unlike the horrid girl Ava made her out to be in her story. Ava learns that when you write something bad down and let others see it, it is like ripples in a pond after tossing in a stone, and wrong thing she wrote has more repercussions than she ever would have show more imagined.
Ava is also dealing with her parents tendency to ignore her and pay extra attention to her sister. She loves her sister dearly, but is also very jealous of the attention she receives.
"Ava and Pip" is a delightful book with characters who are all completely lovable, in spite of their weaknesses (or sometimes because of their weaknesses.) There are a few worthwhile lessons to learn, which are presented clearly but not heavy-handedly. And it is also an entertaining love note to the English language - something very unusual in a young readers book. show less

Two things I will admit: one, I am twenty-three years old and, while a huge lover of children's literature, not the target audience for this book. Two, while I really enjoyed this book, I admit that that pleasure was compounded (if not changed) by the fact that I am a Middlebury alum, and Weston apparently has an MA there and has taught there before.

All that aside, though, I really did enjoy this book. Such a sweet tone, full of good lessons without a preachy tone, and sweet characters you care about. Sometimes the diary style with Ava's intense feelings were a bit much for me--but, like I said, I'm not the target audience. I suspect children would learn a handful of new words, enjoy the wordplay as much as I did, and feel warm and show more fuzzy inside after reading this book. show less

Overall, I liked this book about two sisters in a word-nerd family. The names of everyone in the family is a palindrome and palindromes run through out the story. The palindromes actually bogged down the flow of the story for me. Perhaps it would not with a child reading a chapter a night. In the main story thread, 7th-grader Pip tries to overcome her shyness with help from sister and 5th-grader Ava and an unexpected source. The story is told from Ava's point of view as she writes in her diary. All is nicely resolved but the ending does seem to go on and on.

I really liked this book for several reasons. The main character, Ava, is vivacious and passionate. She really helps the writing become lively and engaging for readers. The language is playful, which helps when she is discussing so much exploration into language and it's various ways. The main idea of this book is to use writing to express yourself and to better understand the things you are going through in life.

This is a lovely books for tweens. Ava, an out-going fifth grader is the narrator in diary form, who seems to be following in her father's footsteps as a budding writer. Pip is two years older, painfully shy, loves to read and sketch. When Pip's birthday party is waylaid by a party given the same night by a new girl in seventh grade, Ava writes a not-so-well camouflaged story about a new mean girl in school who steals other people's friends. The story wins a prize, the new girl (also a prize winner) reads the story, confronts Ava, as does the girl's mother & Ava learns firsthand how powerful words can be and how they have long term effects. She also learns that initial impressions can be wrong. The new girl turns out not to be mean at show more all, and even helps Ava help Pip come out of her shell. Other family dynamics are also covered in this great little book. Just an all around wonderful book for this age! Thanks to the author and the publisher for allowing me to read this advance copy. I recommend it to anyone with preteen kids when the book is released in March 2014. show less

Ava is Pip’s younger sister and very outgoing, whereas Pip is extremely shy and quiet. It is the beginning of a new school year and Pip’s birthday is around the corner. She finds out that her friends cancel on her slumber party to attend a new girl’s boy-girl party and she is devastated. This gives Ava inspiration to write a story for a library competition. At first, Ava feels like she avenged her sister but later realizes that her story “Sting of the Queen Bee” is actually hurtful. With the help of an unlikely friend, Ava tries to fix her wrongdoing and help her sister come out of her shell.

This is a good story about relationships and the interactions of Ava, Pip, their family, and friends. This book helps you learn the show more importance of speaking up, finding your voice, and that your actions may have consequences. There is a lot of wordplay in this book; the characters are word enthusiasts and throughout the book, they create games that involved palindromes and homonyms. (The author included a list of palindromes at the end of the book.)

I would recommend this book to patrons in grades 4th – 7th. This book is in a diary entry format which makes it easy to read. –C.C. show less

"It's me!" I said. "Me! I'm here and I matter!"

This was too young feeling for me. I liked the idea of the diary entries but there wasn't really anything amazing about this story. I also didn't care too much for Ava. I found her to be bratty at times. I'm sure she would be much more relatable to me if I was younger but not now.