I picked this up at the Shawnee, OK Goodwill store. I am always looking for books at a bargain price.

This author has been honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults in the year 1997.

The Margaret A. Edwards Award is awarded to an author for lifetime achievement in writing for teenagers. It is given to an author whose work helps teenagers to better understand themselves and their world.

This book was on the Sequoyah Book Award Masterlist for Young Adults for the year 1991.

Sponsored by the Oklahoma Library Association (OLA), the annual Sequoyah Book Award is a student’s choice award presented since 1959. The program added a Young Adult literature award in 1987. Books chosen for the annual Sequoyah masterlist are selected by two committees of OLA members. Each member of the committee reads over 100 books before recommending titles for the masterlists.
During the school year, young Oklahomans from grades three through junior high are encouraged to read the titles from the masterlist. Students must read or listen to three books in order to cast a vote. The winning book is announced in February and the award is presented during the annual Oklahoma Library Association’s spring conference.
With this award, Oklahoma honors the Native American leader, Sequoyah, for his unique achievement in creating the Cherokee syllabary. In so doing, he created a way to preserve his people’s language and culture.

This book was in Oklahoma with me for a while and has now moved to Waldorf, Maryland.

From the back cover:

Every morning fifteen-year-old Wil Neuton gets up, brushes his teeth, leaves the house, and rows away from shore. He's discovered the island - a place where he can go to be alone and learn to know nature - and himself. On the island he watches the loons and the fish in the lake, and writes and paints. It feels good to get away from the tension rising between his parents, tension brought on by yet another move to a new town.

But Wil can't stay away from the outside world forever. He must face Ray Bunner, the bully determined to challenge him, and his parents, who worry when Wil decides to stay on the island indefinitely. Can Wil bridge the growing gap between himself and the rest of the world?

I have liked other books by this author but this one seemed a little too personal for me. I didn't really enjoy living the book through the mind of Wil. I wasn't thrilled with the characters and frankly I thought just reading about the paintings that he was making and reading his rather strange writing style was just plain dry. I perservered through the book at first just to see where it was going and later on because I had already gotten more than halfway through it and I just wanted to say that I had read it.

I'll most likely give this author a break for another long while and see if my opinion changes. The great thing about books is that they don't have to be liked by all people and my opinion of this book doesn't mean that you are destined to not like it just as people will often not like a book that I would recommend. Happy BookCrossing!

RELEASE NOTES:

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE BOOK
Welcome to Old Town Kensington's Celebration of the International Day of the Book.

April twenty-third (the festival is on the nearest Sunday) is a symbolic day in world literature. Declared as International Day of the Book by UNESCO in 1995, this celebration of books and literature draws its inspiration from a Catalan tradition, the Festival of the Rose.

Legend has it that Saint George, Patron Saint of Catalonia and international knight-errant, slew a dragon about to devour a beautiful Catalan princess. From the dragon's blood sprouted a rosebush, from which the hero plucked the prettiest rose for the princess. Hence the traditional Rose Festival celebrated in Barcelona since the Middle Ages to honor chivalry and love. In 1923, this lover's "festa" became even more poetic when it merged with "el dia del llibre", or The Day of the Book, to mark the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare, the two giants of literary history, on April 23, 1616.

On this day in Barcelona, bookstalls and street festivities run the length of the picturesque La Rambla, the old city's main boulevard and, according to the Spanish author Garcia Lorca, "the only street in the world which I wish would never end".

The Town of Kensington, Kensington Literary Group, and the Pauli Bellet Foundation Catalan Library, invite you to celebrate this wonderful day on Howard Ave, our "La Rambla".

Thanks for picking up one of the BookCrossing books that you found at the festival or selected from our booth. If you are joining BookCrossing please consider entering crrcookie as the member that referred you.

Welcome to BookCrossing!

I read and released this book as part of the 2008 Reduce My TBR Mountain Release Challenge from the Release Challenges forum.