Booktalk #2

Remy, whose father wrote a 70's ballad called "This Lullaby" on the day she was born right before he disappeared, meets a young Romeo at her soon-to-be stepfather's car dealership one June day.  It is the summer before Remy goes off to college and she is determined to be free of entanglements by the time she leaves.  However, this stranger named Dexter, believes they are "meant to be".  Dexter is a musician like Remy's father which to her can only mean disaster.  Relationships are something Remy sees only as non-permanent.  Especially when she finds out that the man her mother is supposed to marry has been cheating on her with his secretary.  To Remy, love is just too unpredictable, "Who could live like this, anyway, with the kind of guesswork that was enough o make a person crazy, just sailing along, taking the bumps here and there, no course navigated whatsoever, with any big wave capable of just tipping and sinking you entirely." (pg 335) This Lullaby is a story about love and life and learning to let go and be willing to experience both.  (Cerese Long, cclong2001@yahoo.com, White Knoll Middle School)

Booktalk #3

"Hey, I've got no illusions about love...It comes, it goes, it leaves casualties or it doesn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say!"

Words from Remy, a girl who doesn't believe in love. And you can hardly blame her. Her romance novelist mother is about to get married again for the fifth time, and her father, a ‘70s hippie singer, died shortly after she was born, leaving her with a one-hit wonder song to remember him by. Entitled "This Lullaby," every time Remy hears it, it seems to feel like a "bruise that never quite healed right." So Remy has become an expert at ending relationships before they ever have a chance to get serious or cause any hurt. She has rules for keeping the guys she dates at arms length. But then Dexter, a quirky, klutzy, alterna-band boy inserts himself into her life, and Remy suddenly finds the carefully constructed walls around her heart beginning to crumble. This is a love story, no doubt about it. Learning that loving is taking a chance, it's risking being hurt yes, but it is also risking really feeling totally and completely alive. Love is a leap of faith, and soft landings are never guaranteed. Will Remy ever decide if it is worth the risk? (Prepared by: Rose Grayson) Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award, 2006-2007