About this item
Azalea is not happy about being dropped off to look after Grandmother Clark. Even if she didn't care that much about meeting the new sixth graders in her Texas hometown, those strangers seem much preferable to the ones in Paris Junction. Talk about troubled Willis DeLoach or gossipy Melinda Bowman. Who needs friends like these! And then there's Billy Wong, a Chinese-American boy who shows up to help in her grandmother's garden. Billy's great-aunt and uncle own the Lucky Foods grocery store, where days are long and some folks aren't friendly. For Azalea, whose family and experiences seem different from most everybody she knows, friendship has never been easy. Maybe this time, it will be. Inspired by the true accounts of Chinese immigrants who lived in the American South during the civil rights era, these side by side stories--one in Azalea's prose, the other in Billy's poetic narrative--create a poignant novel and reminds us that friends can come to us in the most unexpected ways.
About the Author
Augusta Russel Scattergood grew up in a small town in Mississippi. She has since lived in North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Florida- twice! Although if anybody asks where she's from, Mississippi would be the answer.
Augusta is a former school librarian, a book reviewer and blogger. GLORY BE, her debut novel, was named one of Amazon's Top Twenty Middle School books for 2012 and received the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for her region. A second novel, THE WAY TO STAY IN DESTINY, set in Florida and told by a baseball-loving, piano-playing boy named Theo, was published by Scholastic in January, 2015 and was starred on Bank Street's list of Best Books of the Year. Her newest middle-grade novel, MAKING FRIENDS WITH BILLY WONG, also historical fiction, is set in the Deep South at the cusp of the civil rights movement.
For more information, please visit her website: http://www.augustascattergood.com/
