Dear Blue Sky

July 2, 2012
After Cassie’s larger-than-life older brother, Sef, leaves to fight in Iraq, the seventh-grader struggles without his stabilizing influence. Cassie’s family is faltering, too: her sister rebels with a new boyfriend; her mother drinks and has terrifying premonitions about Sef; and her younger brother, who has Down syndrome, stops speaking entirely. A school assignment prompts Cassie to find a blog written by someone her age in another country, and she begins corresponding with a 13-year-old blogger in Iraq who goes by the name Blue Sky. The teenager named her blog for the peaceful Iraq of the past, and she shares painful details about deaths, power outages, and having to stop attending school because of bombing. In her first children’s book, adult
author Sullivan (Ship Sooner) effectively sketches Cassie’s growing confusion as she learns more and cultivates a more balanced view of the war while making new friends and resolving her own conflicts. Sullivan doesn’t sugarcoat how hard things are for Cassie’s family on the home front, yet captures the resilience and hope that keep them going. Ages 10–up.

June 15, 2012
Cassie's whole world changes when her beloved older brother, Sef, goes to war in Iraq. Before Sef even leaves, Cassie has nightmares about his demise. Once he's gone, her family jumps at every phone call. To complicate matters, her father supports the war; her mother doesn't. While her parents are preoccupied, her best friend, Sonia, inexplicably stops talking to her; her older sister, Van, tests out risky behaviors; and her developmentally delayed younger brother, Jack, becomes altogether silent. When a seventh-grade social-studies project leads her to a blog called Blue Sky, written by an Iraqi girl of similar age, Cassie starts to see the war from a different perspective. Blue Sky's world is more literally torn apart--her city is destroyed, her family is terrorized, their home is often without electricity and running water. While Sullivan strives to raise difficult questions about American involvement in Iraq, some efforts come across as forced. Yet Cassie's first-person narration effectively captures the messiness of life in a loving family when outside-world events intervene. Through it all, Cassie discovers her own strengths and rallies everyone around her, just as Sef would have wanted her to do. A compassionate portrait of a family struggling with painful changes, despite some heavy-handed moments. (Fiction. 11-14)

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2012
Grades 5-8 Seventh-grader Cassie's family centers on beloved Sef, a recent high-school graduate who has signed up to go to Iraq. Sef nurtures and protects his younger siblings, especially the developmentally disabled youngest child, Jack. His departure for Iraq, supported by his father but not his mother, wreaks havoc on each family member and on the parents' marriage as well. Then Cassie receives a school assignment to read the blog of someone she'd like to learn more about. She selects the blog of Blue Sky, a girl in Iraq just her age. E-mails and blog entries round out Cassie's first-person narrative as she learns to live with the aching loss of her brother, disintegrating friendships, and her older sister's breakdown. Sullivan's first novel for younger readers bears her trademark spare delivery, a good choice for Cassie's tension-filled life. Fully dimensional characterizations bring depth to the story as Cassie matures and begins to understand the hard truths that life is often unfair and frequently no one cares. Readers most certainly will care, though they may fuss a bit at the lack of resolution.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013
In 2006 seventh-grader Cassie's brother, the rock of the family, is deployed to Iraq. Cassie starts following thirteen-year-old Iraqi girl Blue Sky's blog--for a class project on Lois Lowry's The Giver--and finds it eye-opening to see the war from her perspective. The complexity of war is a challenge in a book for middle-schoolers, but Sullivan gets it right.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2012
It's 2006, and seventh-grader Cassie's brother, Sef, has just been deployed to Iraq. Dad is a proud veteran and welcomes Sef's decision. Mom disapproves of the war but wants to support her son. Sef has always been the rock of the family, hero to eight-year-old brother Jack (who has Down's syndrome), keeper-in-line of moody teenaged sister Van, and role model to Cassie, who wants to fill Sef's shoes but finds that they are too big. As part of a class project on Lois Lowry's The Giver, Cassie begins to follow the blog of a thirteen-year-old Iraqi girl known as Blue Sky. It's eye-opening to see the war from Blue Sky's perspective, and Cassie learns that things can be more complicated than they initially seem. The complexity of war is a challenge in a book for middle-schoolers, but Sullivan gets it right. Cassie's family, honest and hurting, behaves in ways disjointed, unpredictable, and also occasionally heroic. The Giver, with its references to memory, freedom, and letting go, fits in well with the story's themes. As in Lowry's book, the ending leaves readers to imagine the characters' fates. Just as in war, Cassie finds there are no easy answers. robin l. smith

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)