Puss Reboots: Blog: July 2020: Where the Watermelons Grow

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The Amelia Six by Kristin L. Gray
Claws for Concern by Miranda James
A Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Collette and Joell Jacob
Death by Vanilla Latte by Alex Erickson
Descender, Volume 4: Orbital Mechanics by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen
Every Missing Piece by Melanie Conklin
The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente
Giant Days Volume 13 by John Allison
The Grim Reader by Kate Carlisle
The House in Poplar Wood by K.E. Ormsbee
Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena
In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany
In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow
Just a Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe by Sarah Mlynowski
Lu by Jason Reynolds
A Match Made in Heaven by Trina Robbins and Xian Nu Studio
The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott
Nightschool: The Weirn Books Collector's Edition, Volume 1 by Svetlana Chmakova
No Grater Danger by Victoria Hamilton and Emily Woo Zeller
The Not So Boring Letters of Private Nobody by Matthew Landis
Once Upon an Eid edited by S.K. Ali
The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Power of Her Pen by Lesa Cline-Ransome and John Parra
Property of the Rebel Librarian by Allison Varnes
Roll with It by Jamie Sumner
Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright
This Is New York by Miroslav Sasek
Twelve Angry Librarians by Miranda James
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin

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June 2020 Sources

June 2020 Summary

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Where the Watermelons Grow: 07/26/20

Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin is told from the perspective of twelve year old Della Kelly. Her parents are watermelon famers in the South. Her mother has schizophrenia. There's a drought that is making everything worse.

This is a very slow middle grade fiction. The first third is just set up of the atmosphere. It's hot. The air conditioner is broken. It's unbearably hot and humid. Della and her baby sister can't sleep. Everyone is irritable.

Then things finally mosey into Della's introduction to the Little Free Library and her life outside of the home. It's about her love of drawing, her best friend, helping at the farm stand.

And then there's the Bee Lady and her honey. And it's supposed to fix things but the things you need not the things you want. But frankly by this time in the audiobook I was bored and ready to move on.

I think this book would have worked better for me in print. At least skimming would have been easier.

Two stars