{"id":37063,"date":"2024-05-17T20:51:31","date_gmt":"2024-05-18T00:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37063"},"modified":"2024-05-17T20:51:31","modified_gmt":"2024-05-18T00:51:31","slug":"review-of-the-mighty-heart-of-sunny-st-james-by-ashley-herring-blake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37063","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James, by Ashley Herring Blake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James<\/em><\/p>\n

by Ashley Herring Blake<\/p>\n

Little, Brown and Company, 2019. 370 pages.
\nReview written January 22, 2020, from a library book
\nHonor Selection of the City of Fairfax Regional Library 2020 Newbery Book Club<\/p>\n

I read this book in January 2020 because one of the girls in my Newbery Book Club nominated it as a contender. I was sorry I hadn\u2019t read it sooner.<\/p>\n

The book begins as Sunny St. James is ready to have her heart transplant. She has plans for her new life with a new heart: Do awesome amazing things she could never do before; find a new best friend; and find a boy and kiss him.<\/p>\n

Well, the first two things are easy enough. Though Kate, her guardian since her mother gave her up when she was four, is very cautious about what she will allow Sunny to do. She\u2019s so used to being worried about Sunny\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

Then Sunny meets Quinn, a girl on the beach who\u2019s visiting for the summer. She will make a wonderful new best friend. She doesn\u2019t know that Sunny\u2019s old best friend told the whole swim team that Sunny sometimes wondered about what it would be like to kiss a girl. Quinn doesn\u2019t know about that, and Sunny makes it clear she\u2019s looking for a boy to kiss. It doesn\u2019t help that the first time Sunny gets near a boy that summer, she accidentally breaks his nose.<\/p>\n

But Sunny\u2019s mother also comes around for the first time in eight years when she learns about Sunny\u2019s heart transplant. She wants to get to know Sunny, and Sunny\u2019s not sure about that. But it turns out that her mother isn\u2019t nearly as cautious about what she\u2019ll allow Sunny to do as Kate is.<\/p>\n

In tone this book reminded me very much of the author\u2019s recent book, Ivy Aberdeen\u2019s Letter to the World<\/em>, so I wasn\u2019t at all surprised that Sunny might rethink her plan to kiss a boy. So I didn\u2019t get a surprise, but I did like the way the story was carried out with some realistic ups and downs among fallible people trying to love each other well.<\/p>\n

This book is the story of a middle school girl trying to figure out life with a new heart. Like Sunny, the book shines.<\/p>\n

lbyr.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I\u2019m posting the oldest reviews I\u2019ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They\u2019re still good books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James by Ashley Herring Blake Little, Brown and Company, 2019. 370 pages. Review written January 22, 2020, from a library book Honor Selection of the City of Fairfax Regional Library 2020 Newbery Book Club I read this book in January 2020 because one of the girls in my Newbery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-contemporary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37063"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43781,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063\/revisions\/43781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}