Family Week($8.00Value)

Description

Four best friends spend Family Week together at an annual gathering of LGBTQ+ families in Provincetown, MA—the largest of its kind across the world—in this middle grade coming-of-age story that celebrates identity, acceptance, and found family. For as long as they can remember, Mac, Lina, Milo and Avery have celebrated Family Week together in "the smallest, gayest town in the world"—Provincetown, Massachusetts. But this summer, their big rented beach house feels different. Avery’s dads are splitting up, and her life feels like it’s falling apart. Milo’s flunked seventh grade, which means everyone is moving on to bigger and better things except for him. Mac’s on his way to a progressive boarding school that lets transgender kids like him play soccer, but it means leaving his twin sister, Lina, and his moms—and the safety of home—behind. Everything is changing, and for Lina, it feels like it's happening with or without her. Avery, Milo, and Mac know this is going to be their last summer together. But Lina can't accept that—and if she can make this the best summer ever, maybe she'll convince them that there will be a Family Week next year. Good things might not last in the real world, but they do in P-town.... Right? "[A] warm family tale." — Publishers Weekly "Moon’s snapshot of shifting relationships and consequent growing pains will speak to middle-grade readers and be especially appreciated by fans of diverse family fiction and queer stories." — Booklist " An engaging, introspective read that balances humor with heartfelt emotion, capturing the joy, pain, and uncertainty of adolescence in a way that will resonate with young readers navigating their own paths." — School Library Journal Sarah Moon is the author of SPARROW and MIDDLETOWN, both of which received critical acclaim. A teacher and college counselor, she lives and works in Brooklyn with her wife and their kiddo. Saturday Milo and Lina woke up at the same moment, the same way they had the third Saturday in July ever since they could remember: their moms blaring “We Are Family” through every speaker in the house and laughing hysterically at their own joke. Milo heard Mom singing at the top of her lungs in Lina’s room and knew that it would be only seconds until Ma opened his door, practically screaming “Good morning! Let’s gooooooo!” as she threw rainbow bead necklaces into his room. They would scatter onto the dictionaries he’d left open on his desk the night before. Last month, Mom had insisted on going to clean out Gong Gong’s house by herself, after his last stay at the last hospital, his sixth in the last year. “I might be the one with the tattoos,” Ma said, “but Mom is the tough one. She needs to go clean out your Gong Gong’s house by herself. When she gets back, that’s when she’ll fall apart.” Ma was right, of course. The night Mom got back, they ordered food from Mr. Wonton, the place they always ordered from when Gong Gong came to visit, and Mom cried into her broccoli and bean curd. That night, she gave Gong Gong’s dictionaries to Milo. One Hunanese-Vietnamese dictionary from 1945, when Gong Gong’s family moved to Vietnam, and a 1975 Vietnamese-English dictionary from when Gong Gong and Bà moved to New Hampshire. Milo was supposed to be working on the translation of The Phantom Tollbooth, the book he and Lina had loved as little kids. They were going to make a graphic novel version, Lina doing the pictures and Milo translating each chapter into a different language, but lately he’d just been staying up late with Gong Gong’s old dictionaries and avoiding the illustrations Lina dutifully left him. Last night’s installment, chapter seven, was buried under the dictionaries. He hadn’t even made it past chapter two, and he was leaving for Truegrove in just a few weeks. He pushed it from his mind as he headed into the hall to wait for the bathroom. “Lina! Hurry up!” Despite the fact that his twin sister always got up later than him, she always managed to sneak into the bathroom seconds before him. It would have been infuriating if it hadn’t been somehow kind of impressive. “Grmpphhhh” came Lina’s still-asleep answer through the door. “Lina, I swear to god, you know we have like half a second until Ma’s mood goes from ‘We Are Family’ to ‘The Traffic on the Bridge of Doom,’ and if I have to endure two hours waiting to get on the Bourne Bridge while Ma fumes and demands silence so that she can ‘concentrate’ on sitting in traffic, you are dead to me.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Milo. I am a delight behind the wheel,” called Ma from her bedroom, coming to the door and raising a single eyebrow at him. “Totally, ha ha,” said Milo as he banged on the door again. “Lina!” he pleaded. The door opened and Lina pushed past him, looking somewhere between zombie and sloth. This was beyond sleepy, even for Lina. “Whoa. You okay?” “Yeah. Tired. All yours.” She went into her room and closed the door. She wasn’t okay, of course.