Product Details
Introducing Sasha Abramowitz

Introducing Sasha Abramowitz
By Sue Halpern

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Product Description

“I’m wild about Sasha . . . You’ll like her, too.” – Gregory Maguire

Meet Sasha Abramowitz: smart, funny, resourceful. Aspiring writer and pastry chef. Good listener (usually), good talker (when she feels like it), good friend (most of the time). Good sister? Well, that’s more complicated. You see, her brother has Tourette’s syndrome, which is really his problem, but in a way it’s Sasha’s, too (he can be pretty embarrassing at times). Let’s just say she’s working on it. Anyway, he’s away at a special school (until a fire sends the students home, unexpectedly). But with her baseball-loving professor dad, a mom who teaches neuroscience, a babysitter who’s the star shortstop for the Krieger Cats and doubles as a magician and card trickster, an ex-babysitter who becomes her substitute teacher, and an onagain-off-again best friend, Sasha is not alone. As she struggles with changing friendships and feelings about her older brother, learns her lines for her part in Cheaper by the Dozen, gets to know James, the quiet boy who plays opposite her, and helps the doctors solve a medical mystery, she comes to see herselfand her life in a different light.

In this original novel, Sasha tells her story, complete with footnotes, card tricks, appendixes, and all her best vocabulary words, with brio.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #2053187 in Books
  • Published on: 2005-09-29
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 279 pages

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8–Sasha, 11, lives in the dorm at Krieger College with her professor parents. Her older brother has Tourette's syndrome and goes to a boarding school. Sasha doesn't talk easily about Danny, even to her therapist, but she is able to talk to her neat babysitter, Andrew Hardy, who plays baseball for the college. Danny's unexpected return home brings things to a head. Although a series of amazing coincidences links the lives of several characters from various times and places in Abramowitz family history, the plot feels natural, never forced. Sasha's narration reveals her to be precocious but believable. Her maturation is subtle and realistic as she develops from a scrappy child who denies all feelings about Danny's illness to a kind friend who views him with clear-eyed compassion. Her straight-faced wit makes her kin to E. L. Konigsburg's heroines. Facts about Tourette's remain in the background, and nothing about the book is preachy.–Wendi Hoffenberg, Yonkers Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr.^B 5-8. Eleven-year-old Sasha wants to have a normal life, but living in a dorm with her parents, who teach at college, and having Marie Curie as her middle name doesn't help. Then there's her older brother, Danny, who has Tourette's syndrome and lives at a special school nearby. Summer should be fun, but her best friend starts hanging out with a boy--and Danny comes to live at home. Halpern, who has written both fiction and nonfiction for adults, turns her considerable talents to envisioning the impact a devastating illness can have on a family, at the same time creating a lively, engaging protagonist whose first-person narrative incorporates wry asides as well as painful truths. The tear-jerking ending may be manipulative, but the author still manages to make her depiction of Tourette's ring true--without the graphic language that sometimes occurs with the condition. More follow-up facts about the syndrome would have strengthened the book, though among the appendixes is a report from Sasha's classmate about baseball player Jim Eisenreich, who has Tourette's. Shelle Rosenfeld
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Halpern has penned an engaging plot.  Sasha's insightful, bright view on life in general will keep readers tuned in to her sagacious commentary.  A fast-paced, enjoyable read."  -- Kirkus Reviews
 
"Halpern...turns her considerable talents to envisioning the impact a devastating illness can have on a family, at the same time creating a lively, engaging protagonist."  -- Booklist
 
"A tale told by an engaging narrator, capped by an unexpected and affecting finale."  -- Publishers Weekly
 
"Humorous.  Will appeal to adept younger readers who like a feisty female character and plenty of action and mystery."  -- VOYA
 
"[Sasha's] straight-faced wit makes her kin to E.L. Konigsburg's heroines." 
-- School Library Journal