Summer 2006 Review

Sasha Marie Curie Abramowitz wanted a normal life, but how could her life be normal with a middle name like Marie Curie, and a brother with Tourette's Syndrome. Sasha and her parents lived in a college dorm, considering her parents were both science professors at Krieger College. Her parents specialized on how the brain functions, and the different parts of the brain. However, Sasha's brother, Danny, went to a private school for children with "problems," as Sasha calls it. Danny has trouble concentrating on certain things, and he has trouble listening. He enjoys baseball and card tricks, but when he becomes frustrated or angry he cusses uncontrollably, Tourette's Syndrome. Sasha wants a normal brother, and a normal family. Not a family where both of her parents study the brain and where her father is also an English professor, but believes he's a poet. Although, Sahsa is always proud to report that her best friend, Carla Smith, is normal. When Sasha grows up she wants to be a writer and a pastry chef, but those aren't the plans that Carla has for them.

Every week Carla has a different idea that she wants to follow through with, to either make money or help others. One was the A. Hardy Detectives, which posed a problem. There is a baseball player that goes to Krieger College whose name is Andrew Hardy, but he isn't a detective, he does card tricks to earn money. When Andrew called Sasha and asked her about the detective business, the A. Hardy Detectives were out of business. Carla didn't mind though, she had started something else known as Red with a boy named Pinky Summers. Sasha didn't care, because she had something else on her mind, Danny. Every month Sasha and her parents went up to visit Danny at his school, and every time the counselors said that they would like to send Danny home for a few months because he was behaving so well. Well, this time, Danny was coming home for good, because one of the old custodians set a part of the school on fire and did considerable damage to the school so every child was sent home. Sasha couldn't bare the fact of that there was no room in the dorm for her brother, let alone the fact that he was coming home, and staying home. At one of the baseball games, the Krieger Cats were in for the scare of their life, their best player, Andrew Hardy, was hurt by a baseball. His parents flew in from Arizona and requested that he stay with the Abramowitz's which was fine, only there was no room with Danny coming home.

I really enjoyed this book because every person has a view of what "normal" is and Sasha wanted a normal family, with a normal brother, in a normal house, and normal jobs. However, she didn't get what she asked for, and learned to live with her life. I would recommend this book for middle school students because they seem to go through a lot of hard times that they feel that no one else understands. sometimes they just need someone to connect to and I believe Sasha Marie Curie Abramowitz is the perfect person.

~ Ashley Aldan, grade 8, Boardman Center Middle School

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