FOR OLIVE GUERRERO, DIFFERENT IS MORE THAN JUST A WORD.
What does it mean to be different? 14-year-old Olive is struggling to find out. Everything about her is so different from the rest of her family. She is big-haired, brown skinned, and clumsy in a family of cream-colored beauties who are all popular and Good At Sports. She closely resembles a father she has never known, and about whom her mother never speaks, and no one wants to tell her why. She turns to books and other things in her quest to find answers, and as a way to cope with her loneliness. When she learns the truth about her father, she must decide whether or not she will let the differences in her life define her forever.
A unique coming-of-age story unfolding through dictionary-style chapters, What Things Mean takes a closer look at the things that define a life, and the many ways in which we find meaning.
*Grand Prize Winner, Scholastic Asian Book Award 2014
"Maybe, that's how it's meant to be. Maybe we all have to let go of things, and people, in order to keep our balance. Maybe that's the only way to keep moving forward."
"Maybe she's trying to understand how, in the space of a minute, something can turn from a thing that fulfills you entirely to something that empties you out."
"Light always remains. The world turns, and days pass, and the sun warms the places that need it. Maybe that is how it is with everything else. Things go where they are needed, and when they do, we simply learn how to live without them."
"I was always going to be somewhere, stepping over some line. We all were - even if we didn't want to admit it. There was only forward or backward, and an infinite line of changes either way."
"I know now that things are always more than what they mean. Things mean different things to people. People are the ones who give meaning to things."
Labels: 2016, 4.5 Stars, Contemporary, Mystery, Review, Young Adult