Quaking

Quaking, by Kathryn Erskine, is in the Top Ten of the 2008 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers list. This is a story about a fourteen-year-old girl called Matt, short for Matilda, who has been passed from family member to family member since her Mom was killed by her abusive father when she was six years old. Now she's living with Sam and Jessica, who are Quakers. She has spent her life developing a wall around her heart, but Sam and Jessica keep trying to get in. She's very smart and hopes to graduate from high school in two years because she is taking AP classes, and then move to Canada because you can declare yourself legally adult at sixteen there. She's sure Sam and Jessica will have lost interest in her by then. But as time goes by, and they don't stop caring about her, she starts to care about them, and even their disabled foster son Rory. In the end, she cares so much that she tries to stop a bully and his friends from torching the Meeting House where Sam is. One of the major themes in this book is peace and patriotism. Sam, Jessica, Matt, and others believe that the fighting in the Middle East needs to stop so that no more soldiers or civilians will have to die. Matt's history teacher and others in town think that if you don't agree with the war, then you must agree with the terrorists. This book had humor and heart, and a timely message about the price of peace. This is the kind of story that when you get to the last page you feel better for having read this book.