Sure Signs of Crazy
By: Karen Harrington
Genre: Middle Grade Realistic Fiction
Curriculum Subjects: Family Life: Parents/Siblings/Babies, Personal Development: Self-Discovery, Guidance/Health: Death
Grade: 3 – 7
AR: 9.0
F&P: Z
You’ve never met anyone exactly like twelve-year-old Sarah Nelson. While most of her friends obsess over Harry Potter, she spends her time writing letters to Atticus Finch. She collects trouble words in her diary. Her best friend is a plant. And she’s never known her mother, who left when Sarah was two.
Since then, Sarah and her dad have moved from one small Texas town to another, and not one has felt like home.
Everything changes when Sarah launches an investigation into her family’s Big Secret. She makes unexpected new friends and has her first real crush, and instead of a “typical boring Sarah Nelson summer,” this one might just turn out to be extraordinary.
Praise for Sure Signs of Crazy
“Sarah Nelson lives between a terrible tragedy in the past and a terrible fear about what might happen in the future. In that uncertainty, Sarah faces her life squarely, with a heroism that makes us cheer for humanity’s courage, wit, and guts. She faces a divided friendship, the death of a neighbor, the loss of her first love, the near loss of her father, and, most poignantly, the knowledge that her lost mother will never be found–and yet hers is a compelling journey that takes us into that most fragile place: Hope. You will be glad you journeyed there with her.” –Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honor author of The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now
★ “Don’t think this will be a hard sell to readers…for Harrington has created a protagonist who is, in her own way, as clear-eyed, tough-minded, and inspiring as any dystopian hero.” –Booklist
★ “Sarah is an introspective protagonist whose narrative, interspersed with letters and word definitions, keeps readers absorbed…Secondary characters add interest and texture to this compelling novel.” –School Library Journal
★ “Readers intrigued by the premise of this moving story will sympathize with the plucky protagonist and rejoice in the way her summer works out.” –Kirkus
★ “[A] beautifully written story…This is the kind of book that stays with you.” –Library Media Connection