Bibliography:
Connor, Leslie. 2008. Waiting for Normal. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN: 9780060890889
Plot Summary:
Addie and her mommers are moving into a tiny trailer in the middle of Schnectady, New York. It isn’t much to look at and it isn’t home. Home is where Addie’s half sisters live with her ex-stepfather Dwight. Home isn’t where her mother can stay long, disappearing for days at a time, causing Addie to tally the food supply and calculate how to get the most meals out of the meager stock of groceries. For Mommers, its all or nothing, go big or go home. She is always looking for the next big thing, this business, that degree, this handsome man–at that moment in time, that is what she wants more than anything in the world. For Addie, things are simpler–her flute, her vocabulary notbook, her hamster, her friends, and her family. She looks forward to Dwight and her sisters visiting while at the same time struggling when she has to leave them to go back to her less than normal life.
Critical Analysis:
This is not a book of big moments but of small struggles and quiet triumphs that slowly build to a resolution that had me in tears for the beauty and bittersweet happiness of the ending. There is a thread running throughout the story about heroes, what and who heroes are, very well done without hitting the reader over the head. The book is filled with hope, and all kinds of love expressed in all kinds of ways. While it never identifies it as such, it shows the struggle of dealing with a loved one who is severely mentally ill and how others in that person’s orbit are effected and changed. All the characters, even those on the periphery are multidimensional and real, from the mean boy at school to the gruff grandfather–they all have more than one side.
Review ExcerptsKLIATT: “This book persuades that good people and delighful possibilities are all around, even in the most unpromising circumstances.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review): “[Leslie] Connor treats the subject of child neglect with honesty and grace in this poignant story. Characters as persuasively optimistic as Addie are rare, and readers will gravitate to her.” Copyright 2008 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
School Library Journal (starred review): “A story centered around loss, heartbreak, abandonment, and new beginnings.”