Missing May

Locations
Call Number: Y BOCD Fiction / Rylant, Cynthia
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Kids 4-week checkout	Y BOCD Fiction / Rylant, Cynthia	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Unabridged.
Compact discs.
Read by Frances McDormand.
After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living. Twelve-year-old Summer, her classmate Cletus, and her grieving Uncle Ob set off across West Virginia in search of a "Small Medium at Large" in fond hopes of reaching Aunt May beyond the grave. Their journey is heartening, funny, and altogether unforgettable.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

family, love, and loss submitted by camelsamba on July 12, 2011, 10:08am I've been reading lots of Cynthia Rylant books aloud to my youngest son (The Lighthouse Family series, and the High-Rise Private Eyes series). She has such a wonderful way to writing - wonderfully expressive vocabulary, caring relationships, success in the face of challenges, etc. You just feel warm inside reading them. The book jacket in one of those series mentions her award-winning books, including Missing May, so I grabbed it off the shelf when looking for audiobooks a few weeks back. I'm so glad I did! This is a tender story of loss, family, and love - finding one's way through grief. I'm not sure what age of child would enjoy it, though. It seems like it would have narrow appeal - or maybe I'm just overgeneralizing based on the readers in my house!

The audiobook version was enjoyable - the reader's accent does not detract (not familiar enough with that region to know how authentic it might sound) and there are brief musical interludes at each chapter break that provide a nice transition without being intrusive.

(my ears perked up when I heard the part about the 1000 piece puzzle of the Egyptian pyramids - brown piece after brown piece. She uses this again in one of the High Rise Private Eyes book! I wonder how many times she references her own work?)