“Make Me a Home” is the sequel to Tamra Norton’s smash hit middle-grade novel, “Make Me a Memory.” Our character, Allie, is still living in Edna, Idaho, with her mom, her brother, the new baby, and her grandma while her father is deployed in Iraq. She’s the new kid and really doesn’t like that kind of notoriety. When Ivy moves in, not only is Allie no longer the “new kid,” but she has a new friend as well. Allie thinks things can’t get any better until she comes home from school one day to find her mother crying. Her father was supposed to be coming home in a month, but now the Army wants him to stay another two months.
She tries to be brave about it—two extra months isn’t all that long, is it? And when she closes her eyes, she can imagine that her dad is standing right next to her. But she can’t keep her eyes closed all the time.
Back at school, Allie learns something new about Ivy—her parents are divorced, and her mom now works in the school cafeteria. This gives Celeste and the other snotty girls in class the perfect ammunition to tease Ivy, and they do it mercilessly until Allie goes to Ivy’s defense. She knows what it’s like to miss your father and to have to do whatever you can to cope while he’s gone. She doesn’t want Ivy to feel worse than she already does.
The plot thickens when she meets Ivy’s brother, Ty. He’s a total hottie. The problem is, Celeste thinks so too, and this just adds fuel to the rivalry.
As the summer progresses, Ivy and Allie learn what it means to be best friends and to stick by each other through thick and thin. For Ivy, this means surviving her mother’s remarriage and discovering that Celeste will be her step-cousin after the ceremony. For Allie, it means coming face-to-face with the reality that her father might not come home at all. People are dying in Iraq and she doesn’t know what she’d do if her father was one of them.
Written for a middle-grade audience, “Make Me a Home” will touch your heart no matter how old you are. Praised by the Military Child Education Coalition for accurately depicting the thoughts and emotions of those children whose parents have been deployed, Tamra Norton has created a timely story that will speak to military children and answer the unspoken questions in their hearts.
(This book was published in 2007 by Cedar Fort.)
Related Blogs:
Author Interview: Tamra Norton
Author Interview: Tamra Norton, part two