About this item
Newbery Honor winner Janet Taylor Lisle's gorgeous and profound new novel about a pivotal summer in two girls' lives explores the convictions we form, the judgments we make, and the values we hold.The pond is called Quicksand Pond. It's a shadowy, hidden place, full of chirping, shrieking, croaking life. It's where, legend has it, people disappear. It's where scrappy Terri Carr lives with her no-good family. And it's where twelve-year-old Jessie Kettel is reluctantly spending her summer vacation. Jessie meets Terri right away, on a raft out in the water, and the two become fast friends. On Quicksand Pond, Jessie and Terri can be lost to the outside world - lost until they want to be found. But a tragedy that occurred many decades ago has had lingering effects on this sleepy town, and especially on Terri Carr. And the more Jessie learns, the more she begins to question her new friendship - and herself.
About the Author
Janet Taylor Lisle was born in Englewood, NJ, and grew up in Farmington, CT, spending summers on the coast of Rhode Island, where both her maternal and paternal grandparents lived. The eldest and only daughter in a family of five children, she was educated at local schools, and at fifteen entered The Ethel Walker School, a girl's boarding school in Simsbury, CT.
After graduation from Smith College in 1969, with a degree in English, she joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America.) She lived and worked for the next several years in Atlanta, GA, organizing food-buying cooperatives in the city's public housing projects, and teaching in an early-child care center. She later enrolled in journalism courses at Georgia State University with the idea of writing about the poverty she had seen. This was the beginning of a newspaper reporting career that extended over the next ten years.
With the birth of her daughter, Lisle gradually turned from journalism to writing projects that could be accomplished at home. In 1984, THE DANCING CATS OF APPLESAP, her first novel, was published by Bradbury Press (Macmillan.) She has subsequently published fifteen other novels for children.
Lisle's books have received the Newbery Honor Award (for AFTERNOON OF THE ELVES, 1990) , the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction (for THE ART OF KEEPING COOL, 2001) , Holland's Zilverin Griffel (AFTERNOON OF THE ELVES, 1993) , and Italy's Premio Andersen Award (HOW I BECAME A WRITER AND OGGIE LEARNED TO DRIVE, 2006) among other honors. Her book BLACK DUCK won the 2007 Rhode Island Book Award from ASTAL, and was an ALA Notable Children's Book.
For adults, Lisle has written a two volume history of the town of Little Compton: FIRST LIGHT, SAKONNET 1660-1820, (2010) and A HOME BY THE SEA 1820-1950 (2012)
She lives in Little Compton, Rhode Island, in a home by the sea.
