Lambert, Mary E.
FAMILY GAME NIGHT AND OTHER CATASTROPHES
New York : Scholastic, 2017.
IL 3-6, RL 5.3
ISBN: 978-0545931984

(2 booktalks)

Booktalk #1

Annabelle has always managed to keep her friends outside the "five-mile radius" because the mess of her mother's hoarding is not something she wants the rest of the world to know about. Each member of her family deals with it in their own way, but with nobody in charge, will the situation ever change? Annabelle as narrator adds a great deal of humor to a seemingly hopeless situation as she tries to maintain some semblance of a normal life.   (Vermont DCF Award nominee, 2018-2019)

Booktalk #2

Everyone wants to be normal, right? So what do you do when your family is anything but ordinary? You hide them from your friends! Annabelle feels like a normal kid, but her family is becoming more and more dysfunctional. Her mother is a hoarder ... to the point that Annabelle doesn't let anyone within a five mile radius of her house for fear that they will see the junk that her mother collects. But the hoarding isn't just her mother's problem: it affects everyone in the family in different ways. Her sister has nightmares and is terrified of death, her brother avoids the family, it feels like her father has given up on them, and Annabelle herself has some tendencies that could be considered unhealthy. Something drastic has to change in order to get this family back on track, but how do you fix what seems to be falling apart? (Prepared by: Beth Gambrell, Spearman Elementary School, gambrellb@apps.anderson1.org for South Carolina Book Award)