The Great Good Summer by Liz Garton Scanlon

• Genre: Realistic Contemporary
• Grade Level: 3rd - 6th 
• Reading Level: 5.3
• Length: 240 pages (7 hours)
• Publisher: Beach Lane Books (May 5, 2015)
• My Rating: 3 out of 4

Ivy is spending her summer before 7th grade babysitting two preschoolers and trying to make sense of her  world.  Her mother has left her father and her and run off with a preacher named Hallelujah Dave and his traveling ministry to Florida. She was depressed and sad and needed to figure out her life again.  She left her phone at home and has only sent a few postcards home.  

Ivy spends her days at a park with the kids she babysits and they watch people fly their remote control planes. Paul one of the boys she sees everyday who also happens to be a classmate. He is a science lover and  talks to Ivy about being sad that the NASA space shuttle program is being discontinued. Together, Ivy and Paul discuss life and faith as they struggle with their own beliefs and Christian upbringing. Ivy and Paul decide to pool their money and sneak away on a bus to Florida from Texas to find Ivy's mother. They also plan to go to Kennedy Space Center to see the space shuttle.  Of course, running away comes with lots of complications, but they eventually have a good conclusion despite the bumps along the way. 

This was a nice book.  I was reading a paperback copy with terrible paper and a lighter print which annoyed me.  But the story was unique and quirky. The story line of the mother running away was a bit strange but yet it let the author address questions of faith that both main characters had.  Faith is not a topic addressed in many of the books I have read lately and yet it is something that middle-schoolers do begin to think about and struggle with.  It is not a preachy story but just lets the characters explore their questions with the reader. 

The story might have been a little slow....I ended up quitting halfway and not picking it up for a few days....so it wasn't a stay up all night and read kind of book. But overall I give it a good rating.