Eleven and Holding
Written by Mary Penney
Narrated by Cassandra Morris
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Macy Hollinquest is eleven years old, and don’t count on her to change that anytime soon.
Her birthday is just days away, but she has no intention of turning twelve without her dad by her side. He’d promised to be there for her big day, and yet he’s been gone for months—away after his discharge from the army, doing some kind of top secret, “important work.”
So Macy’s staying eleven, no matter what—that is, until she meets Ginger, a nice older lady who is searching for her missing dog. Ginger’s dog search is the perfect cover for Macy’s attempt to locate her dad. But her hunt puts her on a path to a head-on collision with the truth, where she discovers that knowing can sometimes be a heavy burden. And that change, when finally accepted, comes with an unexpected kind of grace.
Mary Penney’s earnest, heartfelt story of change, loss, and new beginnings will resonate with young readers on the cusp of new beginnings, and stay in their hearts long after it’s done.
Mary Penney
Mary Penney thinks eleven-year-olds ought to be given special medals for surviving one of the toughest years of childhood. She feels certain she ate her body weight in peanut M&M’s that year just to cope. She says that when she was eleven-and-a-half, she began shape-shifting from a reasonable-looking child to an awkward creature with arms, legs, ears, and teeth all pointing in different directions. She wants you all to know that awkward stage passes eventually and very cool things happen next. Just hang on! She is a US Army veteran and works full-time for the Department of Veteran Affairs. Mary lives in Santa Barbara with her four-legged children who love to sleep, play practical jokes, and throw up hairballs. Mary loves to swim (badly), practice yoga (stiffly), and walk (into lots of things). Despite all that, she is deeply grateful for all her Irish good luck, and especially for being able to write novels for kids.
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Reviews for Eleven and Holding
8 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Macy is 11, and she refuses to turn 12 until her father returns from the secret military project he's working on. Her best friend Twee is a grade behind her and the won't be in the same school next year. Her grandmother's coffee shop was sold to a man she doesn't like, her mother seems hostile most of the time, an eccentric old woman has lost her dog and is offering a huge reward, and she keeps running into Switch, a skateboarding punk. But much of what Macy sees in her world is not as it seems, and she will learn quite a bit about family, friends, and passing judgments on others based on minimal knowledge.Delightful book, with some appealing secondary characters in addition to Macy.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I get sad when I look at the shelves of young reader books at work and see lots of fantasy titles and very few contemporary (real-life) fiction books. This is one that came in this month and I'm so glad I picked it up yesterday! It's the story of a girl who isn't going to turn twelve until her father comes home and is there to celebrate with her. The characters are real and I was close to tears by the end. The one little warning I would give is that even though my store shelves it with the 9-12 age group, I would hold off giving it to children until they are 11 or 12. There are pretty mature themes.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Macy is 11 and doesn't want to have her twelfth birthday without her father present. Unfortunately, he is "very busy" with "important work" and won't be able to make it to her birthday. She doesn't understand what could be so important or why what he is up to seems to be so secretive so she is determined to find out. Meanwhile, an older lady in town, Ginger, needs help finding her dog, and Macy agrees to help her friendTwee find the dog, even though there is very little summer left before the two best friends end up in different schools. Sometimes when you go looking for answers, you don't always like what you find but being able to handle the truth is an important part of growing up.