Awards

• Commended for Bank Street's Best Children's Books of the Year 2015 (United States)
• Commended for Canadian Children's Book Centre Best Books for Kids and Teens 2014 (Canada)
• Commended for Globe 100 Best Books 2014 (Canada)
• Commended for Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year 2014 (Canada)
• Commended for The Globe 100 2014 (Canada)
• Short-listed for Red Maple Award for Fiction 2015 (Canada)

Overview

Lynn's life is full - choir practice, school, shopping for the perfect jeans, and dealing with her free-spirited mother. Then one day her life is saved by a mysterious girl named Blossom, who introduces Lynn to her own world and family - both more bizarre, yet somehow more sane, than Lynn's own. Blossom's family is a small band of outcasts and eccentrics who live secretly in an ingenious bunker beneath a city reservoir. The Underlanders forage and trade for the things they need (""Is it useful or lovely?""), living off the things ""Citizens"" throw away. Lynn is enchanted and amazed. But when she inadvertently reveals their secret, she is forced to take measure of her own motives and lifestyle, as she figures out what it really means to be a family, and a friend. Classic Sarah Ellis, this novel is smart, rich, engaging and insightful.

Full Product Details

9781554983681

Table of Contents

Reviews

Appealing and provocative, this challenges readers to assess their own lives, bringing up compelling issues as wide-ranging as the ills of consumerism and the obligations of friendship. Booklist, starred review

Appealing and provocative, this challenges readers to assess their own lives, bringing up compelling issues as wide-ranging as the ills of consumerism and the obligations of friendship. -- Booklist, starred review

Author Information

Sarah Ellis is the author of 16 books for young readers, including The Baby Project and Odd Man Out. She has won the Mr. Christie's Book Award, the Violet Downey Book Award, the Governor General's Award, the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, and the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award. Her books have been translated into French, Spanish, Danish, Chinese and Japanese. She is a masthead reviewer for the Horn Book Magazine and was recently writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library. In 2013 Ellis was nominated for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, children's literature's richest prize. She was also honored with the 2013 Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. She teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Vancouver.

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