Every Soul A Star

Ally's content to talk to her star friends and search the sky for comets. Bree is preparing for her future modeling career and enjoying her carefully plotted popularity. Jack is going on a camping trip in lieu of attending summer school for flunking science.

These three kids will meet at the Moon Shadow campgrounds and form an unlikely friendship as they wait for the much-anticipated eclipse. Everything seems to be changing and each one of them is lost and floundering in a different way. Together, maybe with a little help from the north star, they'll find their ways.

I loved this book! It's packed with interesting astronomical details, but never in a way that felt boring. The plot is centered around an eclipse and the camp ground is show more filled with amateur astronomers, so the details never felt contrived to me. Each narrator is layered and distinct. It was a little like Savvy (unusual kid removed from greater society) meets Greetings from Nowhere (three kids, each looking for something, found it at the Moon Shadow) with lots of stars and planets.

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4.5 stars for me. Thanks Wendy for not introducing an artificial crisis to insert some excitement into the story. Some folks might object that the kids go through so much growth in such a short time, making friends with new kids almost immediately... but they are young teens, and it is a summer situation, so I totally found their inner & interactive dramas plausible. And adorable. I don't know whether the 'tweens and young teens would like the book, though. No super-powers, paranormal stuff, anorexia or cutting, abuse... just a very nice story.

I think the parents are all pretty misguided, however. What do you think about them?

This book is smart and funny and full of heart.

In this story, the lives of four preteens come together at Moon Shadow Campground, where hundreds of people are converging in the summer for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a total eclipse of the sun in mainland America. Ally Summers, almost 13, along with her younger brother Kenny and her parents, live on the campground and manage it. But as the book begins, the kids find out that their parents will be transferring ownership after the eclipse to the Holdens, about to arrive with their 13-year-old daughter Bree and an 11-year-old sister Melanie.

Two similarly-aged boys will also be at the camp. Jack Rosten, somewhat overweight and a loner, is asked by the science teacher who flunked him show more to help on the eclipse tour instead of attending summer school. Jack jumps at the chance to avoid summer school, even though he is not much interested in the stars, which make him feel even more insignificant that he already feels. Ryan Flynn, a year older than Ally and a longtime family friend who comes every summer, now has suddenly matured in ways Ally doesn’t understand. (Ryan, while central to the story, is not one of the narrators; the chapters alternate among Ally, Bree, and Jack.)

All of these kids have problems. Ally, an astronomy lover, doesn’t want to leave the clear skies and natural beauty of Moon Shadow. Bree, a fashionista and aspiring model, doesn’t want to leave city life, with its malls, its emphasis on appearances, and her friends. Ryan is trying to figure out who he should be, sort of like a personification of a cracking male voice. And Jack doesn’t want to be anyone - just invisible.

As you might expect, all of them end up helping each other, and becoming great friends to boot. It’s a wonderful book, and has some very funny parts. Best of all, each of the kids is lovable, and each finds out that being true to yourself is more important than, say, having a good hair day.

Discussion: The author does an excellent job of creating tweenaged characters with all their uncertainties and hopes and that mixture of child and adult common to this age group. She also shows that while kids may be powerless to affect the decisions made by adults, there is plenty they can do to make the best of the changes in their lives.

In addition, the author is obviously a great fan of astronomy, and she conveys her enthusiasm for the stars through the book’s characters. She also includes a section in the back with notes and suggestions for further reading.

Evaluation: This heart-warming story combines endearing characters with good messages, science facts, drama, and excitement into a book that ends in a way bound to please everyone. Highly recommended! show less

So here's the thing about books written for kids - sometimes they treat kids like they are stupid. Or ... if not stupid, just lesser, less than. They're too broad: They give you that same uncomfortable feeling that your Dad's jokey best friend always gave you - you knew he was trying to be funny, but the joke missed its mark by a long shot, and yet you were still required to stand there with a grimace-y smile plastered to your face until enough time had passed that it wouldn't be rude if you just walked away? Yeah: like that.

Those kind of books make me feel sad for the writer, as if the author has forgotten all about their own childhood - the triumphs and tragedies and joys and jealousies. The fact that sometimes days would pass when show more you would barely see anyone besides your parents, and other days you would see so many people you thought the world was in your yard. The way that you could sit for hours imagining dolls and dresses and balls, and how one day, long after all your friends had stopped playing with their dolls, you found that they held no appeal for you either, even though you sat for hours, trying to make the magic come back. It's a tough thing, writing childhood true enough that it hits all the right notes for people, without condescending or writing down to them. In my opinion, it's most especially difficult - and most obviously evident - when an author is trying to portray the chaos that is tweenage-hood, early teenage-hood, middle grade fiction fodder. Those years where people expect you to be responsible enough to do your own dishes or get up when the alarm goes off, yet you're still young enough, and dependent enough that you're pretty powerless when it came to making the big decisions that would effect your life.

The good news is that Wendy Mass (whose 11 Birthdays I also found this summer) is exceptionally good at writing this kind of book. She manages to capture that weird sense of self-confidence, mixed for the first time with a heavy dose of self-doubt, that is so characteristic of this age group. She writes the flustered adolescents' amazing highs and unbearable lows with the same amount of dignity and respect that any good novelist would use for their adult characters. That's the thing I often find is lacking - people who write books for kids but forget that kids are whole people - not caricatures or flat set pieces you can move about for the advancement of your plot - but whole, actual people, whose thoughts and feelings and actions and reactions are just as vital as those of any adult character - and in a book aimed at an audience of similar readers - even more so than an adult character.

And Mass does this brilliantly, as she introduces her three main characters, and takes us through the whole of the story from each of their perspectives. I loved the book, the split perspectives, the changes in voice and tone and thought patterns as the plot evolved. I loved the characters (well, mostly) and the fact that there were 2 girls and a boy, and yet very little in the way of 'love triangle-ing' or 'romantic pondering'. And I loved the science! So much science, and artsy stuff, and random hippy-dom, and being girly and liking to wear makeup: and best of all, none of those things was seen as dumb!

Just a side note, in regards to the science portion of the book: I shared part of it with my nephew, in an attempt to interest him in stargazing and total solar eclipses, and the two of us have promised to be in prime viewing position for the next one (8-21-17, if you're interested). He will have his license by then (shoot me now), and we are road tripping it to somewhere with a spectacular view.

Anyways, have added Wendy Mass to my Author's I Autobuy shelf, and will be glomming her backlist, (which I am glad to see is quite long). Because she does it right, and there's nothing better than that. show less

I really enjoyed this book. Mass does a great job writing in three distinct voices throughout the novel. The romantic and platonic relationships fit the young age of the characters.

One of the few things I disliked about the book was all the talk about watching weight. I recognize that the book was published in 2008 and diet culture was extremely rampant at time, and that it is potentially still accurate to how 13 year olds would think about weight and physical appearance, but it made me uncomfortable. I appreciate Bree's arc of becoming less vain and how Jack's exercise helped him feel more confident, but some of the comments made by the characters feel borderline fat phobic in this day.

Other than that i enjoyed the novel and think it show more is a great middle grade read. show less

For a book that I thought suffered from a slow start, this one really came together by the end. I was fascinated by amount of character growth that occurred even if it did seem artificially fast growth at times. You really can learn about astronomy as well. I like that Wendy Mass didn't soften the hardship of the experience but instead focused on learning to deal with change and learning to grow from accepting it. I felt bad for Ally, smugly satisfied that Bree was thrown out of her superficial comfort zone, encouraged and tormented for Jack, but hopeful for every one of them. That's the sign of a great job at character development. When a reader is drawn to a character even though they are flawed and unfairly burdened in some cases.

Every Soul A Star
* * * * 1/2
In this bustling three character novel, Every Soul a Star, three kids, Ally, Bree, and Jack, make their way through common teenager struggles, for example, popularity and changes in their lives such as moving away or parental struggles.

This book starts out with you meeting a girl named Ally, who lives on a campground called the Moon Shadow, which her parents own, in which eclipse chasers and stargazers go to. Basically it’s an astronomy camp. She has not seen the real world since she was born because the Moon Shadow is located deep in the wilderness and her parents moved there after she was born. Her only entertainment are chores and stargazing, until she finds out that she is moving, and another family show more is taking over the business.

One of the girls who live with that family is named Bree. Bree is a fashionable prom queen who just found out that she is moving away from her glamorous lifestyle in the city to the old campground. She is totally mortified because she had to leave her friends behind and by the look of the campground, which was old and dirty. I personally loved Brees character most of all because she was extremely mean to a point, she was ridiculous.

The two then meet a boy named Jack, who has come to the camp for an out-of-summer school acceptation trip with his teacher Mr. Silver to watch an eclipse.

Through the book a lot of things happen such as, Ally and Bree devise a plan to not move away or to move into the camp but that fails. The three also discover an exo-planet and watch a majestic eclipse.

I gave this book 4 and a half stars because of a lot of reasons. Here is some of the reasons why.When I started reading this book I thought it would be too long, with 330 pages, but it was very enjoyable. I just love when Wendy Mass writes about moral issues such as judging yourself and popularity. She shows judgment in the quote, “I’m here two hours and already I messed up”. “What if Pete had died because I couldn’t follow a simple instruction?” You can see that Jack always looks down at himself from just that quote, but Wendy Mass made it that it set up Jacks character and it shows the reader not to be judgmental of yourself. She also showed popularity in the quote, “See how my eyes look even bigger now? And big eyes are good? Why?” and “This girl is hopeless. They just are”, I tell her. “Who would want small eyes?” This made me think automatically of a diva that has a modeling career because Bree is so engrossed with her looks. This made me not want to listen to her from that point on because I do not like mean girls ruining a good story, but then she softened up and it turned out that I did like her.

I have very little criticisms. The only major one is, in my opinion, third perspective books are not my usual reading pattern. Long story short is that I don’t like them but that’s just my opinion. In this book it was especially true because each character had its own section in every chapter which made the book very long for me at some points. Sometimes there were some parts that weren’t even necessary such as the licorice case that the old lady in the pink sweat suit had. Although at some points, I loved the three section chapters, because Wendy Mass created overlapping stories. At the end of the stories, there were always cliffhangers, and I love the suspense of a good cliffhanger. In my opinion all of the information that was in each section, daily life and human struggles, could have all been put into a one perspective book, making Ally the main character. I say Ally, because I think she is most important because the story generally revolves around her campground and about her moving. Other than that, it was an amazing book, but now I have to wait for the next one just like it. show less