Connor, Leslie.
WAITING FOR NORMAL
New York : Katherin Tegen Books, 2008
IL 5-8, RL 5.8
ISBN: 0060890894

(2 booktalks)

Imagine having to keep track of your food and how much you eat because your mother hasn’t gone food shopping in a while. Or imagine having to entertain yourself on holidays because your mother is out…again.  Twelve-year-old Addie lives in a yellow trailer on a busy corner lot with her neglectful mother.  She wants her life to be “normal” and to live with her loving step-father and half-sisters. But she feels somewhat responsible for her mother. Addie doesn’t want her mother to get into trouble because she is never home with her. So Addie tries to make the best of it but it’s getting harder and harder to live with the lie.    (Rhode Island Teen Book Award nominee, 2010)

Booktalk #2

"Normal...is when you know what's gonna happen next.  Not exactly what, because probably nobody gets that.  But normal is being able to count on certain things. Good things."
Addie has longed for a normal life, but hers in anything but.  With a mother that comes and goes as she pleases and a stepfather fighting for custody. See how Addie handles all the twists and turns she goes through as a twelve-year old girl that has to grow up fast, will she ever have normal? Find out in this contemporary realistic fiction novel Waiting For Normal by: Leslie Connor.  (Brianna Eizenga, beizenga75@hotmail.com, college student)