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4-6
Illustrated by
Matthew Holm.
Color by Lark Pien. "I'm so glad it's summer!?" exclaims Sunny (Sunny Side Up, rev. 9/15, and sequels) on the last day of school, but that's before friend Deb announces that her family is going to spend the summer at her grandmother's in Wisconsin. And if having a summer birthday isn't bad enough, having one when your best friend isn't around and there's no air conditioning and it's your thirteenth--things don't look good. But true to this durable heroine's name, happenstance (beloved Gramps blithely arrives from Florida for an extended visit), hard work (Sunny gets a job at the local pool's snack bar), and a hint of romance (for both Sunny and Gramps!) combine to create a memorable, maturing, and very full vacation. As in the previous stories, the 1970s suburban-Pennsylvania setting of this breezy graphic novel is richly conveyed with not a hint of nostalgia. So closely allied are we with Sunny's perspective that we are right there with her the whole time, including every attempt she makes to conquer her fear of the high dive at the pool. Will she succeed? See title.
Reviewer: Roger Sutton
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
January, 2022