The Warden's Daughter by Jerry Spinelli

• Genre:  Historical Fiction
• Grade Level: 5th - 8th
• Reading Level: 4.1 (9 points)
• Length: 352 pages
• Publisher:  Knopf Books for Young Readers (January 3, 2017)
• My Rating: 3 out of 4
• Readability: Easy to read, lots of things happening, easy to lose track 
• Division 2
• Summary:  Living with her warden father in an apartment above a 1950’s prison, Cammie O’Reilly struggles to come to terms with the loss of her mother, who died saving her from harm when she was a baby, and interacts with some of the inmates. 

In the summer between 6th grade and 7th grade, Cammie comes to grip with the trauma that has always haunted her because her mother died to save her life when she was just a baby. Cammie's anger and frustration 

sends her to set a fire, smoke, shoplift, and just be hard to live with. Lots of characters in this book interact with her, including her best friend, some of the  inmates from the prison her father is a warden of, and other people in the town. Cammie has a reputation for being tough and a "curmudgeon". Hope, however comes to Cammie and she finds transformation during this particularly tough summer when she misses having a mother. 

This book reminded me of Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Choldenko and the musical Hairspray. One of the plot lines is about the TV show Bandstand in Philadelphia along with some of the music of the era.  I had to look up some of the lines in the book and then realized that Spinelli was referring to music lyrics. 

I don't think elementary kids would get this book since it seems to refer to history without giving much explanation. A lot of things happen in this book and it was hard for me to keep track of everything.  I did, however, like how Cammie found hope at the end of the book. It reminded me that kids with trauma in their lives do have a hard time dealing with it and many times are destructive or take it out on everyone else. Even though Cammie's father seems rather distant in this book, he seemed to be taking the outlook that his daughter needs to struggle and she will come out of it OK.