Review Detail

This is such a refreshing book! While I enjoy a good, gossipy read as much as the next person, sometimes its just really nice to read something, well, nice. The Callahan Cousins: Summer Begins by Elizabeth Doyle Carey is set in todays world (the girls listen to IPods, for instance), but really could have been set in just about any time. This isnt a story about wealth or backstabbing or anything like that its a story about family, tradition, and growing up.

Hillary and her three cousins Neeve, Phoebe, and Kate, have come to Gull Island to spend the summer with their grandmother. Its a family tradition that all twelve-year-olds in the family go through. No parents & fun with their cousins. Hillary has something weighing her down, however. Her parents are on the verge of a divorce and she feels like she needs to prove that shes just as much of a Callahan as the rest of the family.

She has a plan to revive an old tradition that their fathers participated in planting the flag. Competing with the spiteful Sloan Bicket (a girl their own age from another family on the island), the cousins work to get their family flag planted on a small island off of Gull Island. They have a lot to accomplish research, learning how to sail, creating a flag, making new friends, avoiding Sloan...

I recommend this book for anyone looking for a good old-fashioned (but still up-to-date) read. The girls are spunky and interesting and good role models as well.

Be sure to enter the contest to win a copy of the book, sponsored by TimeWarner Bookmark.