Have you ever missed someone so much that you didn’t know how you could go on without them?  Someone special who made everything and everyone better? “May was the best person I ever knew, a big barrel of nothing but love.” After Mama died, I was passed around from one relative to another until May and Uncle Ob finally took me home to West Virginia.  They gave me a home, all the food I cared to eat and love…lots of love.  When May died, Ob and I were lost.  How could we find our way without May?  For months, we just wander aimlessly, not knowing how to live without her.  And, we’re hurting bad, especially Ob.  If something doesn’t change soon, I could lose him too.  It seems there is only one thing we can do to help Ob go on, to help him find purpose again, and to help him stop…. Missing May by Cynthia Rylant. (Lanora Rogers, rogersl1961@yahoo.com)

Booktalk #2

When 6-year-old Summer loses her mother, she is orphaned.  She is passed around from  relative to relative and never really welcome anywhere. Then Summer meets her Aunt May and Uncle Ob.  May and Ob fall in love with Summer the minute they meet her and give her a real home for the next 6 years.  Things are pretty much heaven for Summer until one afternoon when her beloved Aunt May dies, working in the garden. Now Ob doesn’t seem to want to go on living without May, and Summer feels just as lost without May’s generous love.  And as if missing May wasn’t heartache enough, that strange boy from school, Cletus, starts hanging around with Ob.  He is the only one Ob will really respond to.  Cletus lets Ob go on about how May’s spirit visits him and even encourages him to go to see a medium to try to contact May’s spirit.  Summer watches, worried for Ob, annoyed by Cletus, and dazed from her own grief.  How will these three make it, missing May?  (Jocelyn Deal, dealj@clarke.k12.ga, Winterville Elementary, Winterville, GA)