DELETED ITEM - Softcover

I wait for the dive to come. And it does. I don't know how or where it had been...hiding out in one of the pink and white cavities on my body somewhere, I guess. But there it was. I pulled my arms back and over and my feet lifted off and I cut the water cleanly like a knife through butter. At least that's how I felt...Right then, at that exact second, I totally knew that I wanted to do it again. And again and again and again.

Gr. 4-6. Carly, 10, likes to dive, and she's very good at it, whether she's practicing at her local pool in Victoria, Canada, or diving with friends from a rock near her family's island cabin. Her candid first-person, present-tense narrative will draw middle-graders as she grumbles about her "New Dad" and her stepfamily (her Real Dad is dead), shops at the Gap, and tries to act cool. The island setting is idyllic until a catastrophe happens: her best friend, Montana, dives from the rock and breaks her back on a big sunken log. The shock of the accident in the island paradise is not sensationalized, and as Montana slowly recovers, Carly overcomes her grief and depression to dive again like a champion. She also accepts her stepdad. The diving action is exhilarating, the stepfamily dynamics are realistic, and readers will appreciate Carly's realization about "all the stuff that could happen that you can't control at all." Hazel Rochman
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