To Night Owl from Dogfish

I am a sucker for epistolary novels, and this one for middle grade readers was awesome. Bett, a 12 year-old in California emails Avery, a 12 year-old in New York out of the blue. It seems that their dads, after meeting in Chicago while both were on work trips, have started dating and things are getting serious. Serious enough that they're thinking of a future together and are sending the girls off to summer camp together so they can get to know one another and hopefully become friends. Well, Bett and Avery are not having it. They are each very close to their respective dads, and quite like their lives exactly the way they already are, thank you very much. At camp, they contrive never to speak, and never to participate in the same show more activities, which thankfully, is easy as the girls are pretty much polar opposites. Bett is fearless, outspoken, and loves adventure, any kind of water sport, and animals. Avery is an indoor girl interested in reading, writing, crafts, and is terribly afraid of germs, random accidents, and especially of water. Yet they keep emailing. They want to stay one step ahead of their dads and prevent any major life changes. And they ask each other typical girl questions about likes and dislikes, crushes, periods, lip gloss, and the like. And of course, they develop a strong bond that carries them through the very eventful year that follows.

I just loved this book, and read it in nearly one sitting. Avery and Bett are terrific characters, and are joined by other wonderful characters contributing their own notes, letters, emails, and texts. Comparisons to The Parent Trap are fair, I think, though this is truly a 21st century story, with the timeless message that family can be a choice and that love is a gift. show less

Avery and Bett live on opposite coasts, but their single gay dads met at a conference and have fallen in love. Both girls are opposed, and start up an e-mail correspondence to thwart the romance to keep their lives from changing. But when the dads send them to the same summer camp while they go off on a motorcycle trip to China, Bett and Avery actually become friends - and then their lives take another turn. And another.

The girls' personalities and voices are quite different from each other, and equally quirky: New Yorker Avery is an anxious academic; her interest in health and medicine verges on the hypochondriac. Californian Bett is a free spirit who loves water sports and thinks outside the box. Their supporting cast, as it were, is show more excellent: the dads are real people with hearts and flaws, and Bett's grandma (Gaga) and Avery's mother Kristina become a real presence in both the girls' lives.

I was sold on this book on the authors alone (Meg Wolitzer! Holly Goldberg Sloan!), and the fact that it was epistolary made it even better; the letters are mainly between Bett and Avery, but also between each of the girls and their dads, and a few between the girls and other friends or family members.

Deeply satisfying!

Quotes

What is wrong with him?!? Why isn't he listening to me? He's always always always been a good listener. Then he met your dad and now he can't hear me. (Bett to Avery, 23)

Old Gus...has a big jar of horehound candy for sale on the counter, which children used to eat in the nineteenth century. It tastes like boots. Not that I have eaten boots... (Avery to Bett, 33)

[re: periods] I sometimes look at big groups of people and I think: I wonder how many of the women out there are bleeding. It's not that great of a thought. (Bett to Avery, 34)

...what makes [Bett] great is that she doesn't look at the world the way most people do. Instead, she figures things out in her own way. (Avery to her dad, 104)

This is super upsetting and I feel like I've been looking through the keyhole of a door into a room that is my own life, and before now I could only see some of it. Now the door is open at least a crack. (Avery to Bett, 123)

I'm thinking now that maybe all stories are there to explain something. (Avery to Bett, 124)

Nothing was missing before in my life, but now it will be.
You will be. (Avery to Bett, 136)

[School project "Give the right person the credit." p. 153]

Gay people having families doesn't seem like something anyone should have to shout about anymore. Some people are a lot more interested in raising kids than other people. From what I can see, the person most interested usually does the best job. (Bett to Avery, 214)

Bett and Avery's toast, 288-293 show less

I did not know what I was getting into when I opened the pages of this book. It was chosen as a mailed markup book club where we each pick a title. This is not normally a book I would have chosen, but I am so glad someone in my group did. It was simply wonderful.

This book is a collection of letters between two girls who never want to meet, but are destined to be sisters. They find out that their gay dads are sending them to camp so that the dads can go on a romantic trip to China. While at camp the girls are to at least get to know each other. But plans are almost ruined with the first letters as Avery, aka Night Owl, gets her first letter from Bett, aka Dogfish, about wanting to break up their dads and keep their families as they are. show more Brett is very much a go getter. She is active, sporty, and sometimes runs away with ideas that could get her in trouble. Avery is very studious and cautious, sometimes to the extreme. These girls will have a year they never forget.

This book feels so much like the parent trap (Haley Mills version only) without being a copy or a retelling. You get that same happy place feeling of two girls who just try to get everyone around them to want what they want so that everyone can be as happy as they.

I love that this book is told as a collection of letters and emails. It gives the reader an inside look at what each character is thinking. I appreciate that the letters were not just from Avery and Bett, but from both dads, grams, Betty, and even camp directors and counselors.

Once you start this book, you will have a hard time putting it down. I read it in less than 24 hours. If i hadn’t started it at 11 pm, I would have probably read it right through to the end. It reads fast and has so many great things between its pages. I am thankful to my friend who said, hey all, let's read this. It will now go on my always recommend pile. It will fit so many categories, and for so many reading prompts, and so many different reasons you could pair it to a read. Love this book!
#ReadHarder
#Booked19 #remindsmeofahappyplace
#LittleLoveBingo #wanderingbookaneer
#NancyDrewChallenge #MCdliesonanairplane show less

An epistolary middle grade novel about two girls who discover their dads are dating and set out to sabotage the dads' plans for the girls to become friends in anticipation of merging their families. The comparison to The Parent Trap is inevitable, and it's a good comp for the initial premise (if inside out) and the tone--though this novel is not a retelling of tPT, for the story goes in entirely its own directions.

This was a delight to read. I loved all the characters, and I thought Sloan and Wolitzer captured the ever shifting and morphing idiosyncratic interests of pre-adolescents perfectly. The format was fun, especially as we occasionally get letters (emails, mostly, really) from other characters aside from the two girls. Recommended.

My coworker pitched this to me as “adorable” and she was right! I would like to add “charming,” “sweet,” and “more complicated than expected.” It’s also the first proper epistolary novel I’ve read in a while, and it was quite well done and believable. The girls sound and act like girls—voices, interests, random detours into completely unrelated topics, “it seemed like a good idea” decisions, the whole bit—and I really enjoyed watching them grow over the course of the story.

And the story was really engaging! It starts out as a sort of reverse of The Parent Trap, but then it becomes a whole lot more. There’s stuff about family and who is family, and about dealing with disappointment, and how life isn’t a show more single neat story. I quickly found myself cheering with and for the girls, and therefore also cheering for their dads, and I really liked that it portrayed Bett and Avery both as smart, culturally savvy, and as believable daughters of single gay dads. There’s talk of the Marriage Equality Act and not using screens before bed and they’ll just randomly google things because why not, right?

(Also, a surprising amount of diversity! Bett is a girl of colour. Avery is Jewish and has anxiety. Grandma isn’t sitting at home knitting. The dads aren’t the only gay people. I’m pretty sure there were disabled kids at camp, though this is now two books ago so I don’t entirely remember. All of it’s just mentioned in passing, though, apart from the anxiety. Avery has Concerns™.)

And this is pretty adult-reader-friendly too! The adults get subplots and character development, which isn’t common in middle grade, I don’t think. They have realistic-feeling perspectives and reactions throughout. There are parts that made at least this adult snort in a “oh dear, I see where this is going, oh children” sort of way. There’s also a bunch of critique, or possibly just subtextual discussion, of helicopter parenting and extracurricular pressure and wanting things to be 100% perfect and safe for kids at all times, which I found refreshing.

In other words, this is definitely a middle grade that’ll work for kids and adults, and definitely one I’m going to be recommending at work. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s got depth, it’s not going to bore parents or teachers, and I can absolutely see it as an in-class discussion read or something along those lines. It’s very current in a lot of ways and yes! Kids with! Gay parents! Should have! Rep!

8/10

To bear in mind: This book + sugary food = death by sweetness. Several minor characters with homophobic opinions, but like, that’s reality, and both girls discount those perspectives immediately. Near-death experiences involving lakes. show less

First of all, it was hilarious to me that the audiobook narrators had to read so many re's (as in "Subject: Re: Re: Re: You Don't Know Me"). It went from funny to annoying to funny again as the re's piled up. It must be a great audiobook if all the re's didn't make this too annoying to continue listening.

Overall, I thought this was just delightful. I love that the girls each had distinct voices and their emails showed us their personalities so well. Sometimes epistolary novels can have these clunky moments when the author is inserting exposition. This novel let each character's voice shine while conveying the plot in a believable way.

There aren't too many fun middle grade novels about kids with gay parents, so this immediately became show more my favorite (supplanting [b:The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher|18769869|The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher (Family Fletcher, #1)|Dana Alison Levy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1391311284l/18769869._SX50_.jpg|26668105]). show less

I’ve been reading Pamela Paul and Maria Russo’s How to Raise a Reader and they recommended this book in the Books that Make Us Laugh section. It sounded really cute and I’m not above reading middle-grade fiction for my own enjoyment. I didn’t realize until I brought my copy home that it was written by Meg Wolitzer, who wrote The Interestings (4 stars from me) and Holly Goldberg Sloan, who wrote Counting by 7s (5 stars from me). I knew then that this would be a great book.

Avery and Bett don’t have much in common except for the fact that they are both 12 years old and both being raised by single gay dads. Bett is a California surfer girl who’s laid back and goes with the flow. Avery lives in New York and is Type A and very show more anxious. One day, Bett emails Avery, who she has never met, that she has discovered their dads are in a relationship. Not only that, their dads are planning on sending them both away to the same camp for the summer so they can get to know each other. Neither Bett nor Avery are happy about this turn of events. They both want their dads all to themselves. And together they form a plan to make that happen…

This story is told through emails and letters. As a parent of a 12-year-old girl, I can vouch that the authors have captured what 12-year-old girls are like perfectly. This book is really funny but has some serious and suspenseful moments in it too. Even though it starts off as sort of a reverse Parent Trap, it takes some turns that I was not expecting. I was impressed that middle-grade fiction could keep me guessing like this book did!

To Night Owl from Dogfish is a really sweet book. Highly recommended! show less