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THE SLIGHTLY TRUE STORY OF CEDAR B. HARTLEY by Martine Murray Kirkus Star

THE SLIGHTLY TRUE STORY OF CEDAR B. HARTLEY

(Who Planned to Live an Unusual Life)

by Martine Murray

Pub Date: June 1st, 2003
ISBN: 0-439-48622-X
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic

Her father has died (of a heart attack, her mother says), her brother Barnaby has run away, and her mother loves her but is not home much, but Cedar B. Hartley, 12, is a feisty heroine with a “green thumb for people.” She befriends a boy named Kite, son of circus people, and organizes a local circus to raise money for a neighborhood dog’s operation. In the process, she finds her place in the community, answers to family mysteries, and a stronger sense of her place in the world. An ordinary suburb populated by ordinary, if eccentric, characters is made extraordinary by Murray’s vivid writing. Cedar’s charming voice, the strong sense of place, and the author’s interior drawings add up to a superb first novel for the Australian author. A glossary is included to help with such slang as pashing (snogging/tongue kissing), fair dinkum (“are you serious?”), and dag (an uncool person). Readers will be gobsmacked that this first effort at a longer work can be this good. (Fiction. 10-14)