Share-A-Book Saturday (28)

This is something I found over on Just Another Book Addict =), and I thought I'd do my own. There are so many great books out there that get overlooked (especially if they've been out for a while)!

Every Saturday, you share (recommend) a book, preferably one that you haven't reviewed yet. It's just a way to get other books out into the blogging world. This is NOT a review.

Today I'm going to recommend the five-book Aviva Granger series by Jeanne Betancourt.

When ten-year-old Aviva comes home from camp to find her parents have separated, she is afraid that instead of being a two-family child, she'll be a two-bedroom, no-family child.

When I was about eight or nine, I read the first book in this series about a girl named Aviva who was a child of divorce.  I guess I found it fascinating because it was a totally foreign concept to me.  My parents weren't divorced.  I didn't even know of any kids whose parents were divorced!  So the idea of shared custody, where the child spends time at each parent's house, seemed fascinating.

The series begins with The Rainbow Kid.  The book is so titled because Aviva likes rainbows and has them on all her stuff -- not because one or both of her parents is gay (that would explain the divorce, I guess... but that's not the case here!).  She loves animals, and throughout the series she takes care of a number of pets: her sheepdog, Mop (in The Rainbow Kid); her friend's turtle (in Turtle Time); and a new puppy (in Puppy Love).

I really liked the way the characters were written, and I liked her friend Josh (this was about at the time when I started getting crushes on boys).  The series takes place over a few years, and Aviva is in eighth grade (I think) by the events in Puppy Love.

I could not find pictures of all of these books (how frustrating!).  In case you decide to search these out, either at the library or at the used-book store, here's what to look for:

The Rainbow Kid (purple cover featuring Aviva and Mop)
Turtle Time (pink cover featuring a sad-looking Aviva and the turtle)
Puppy Love (blue cover featuring Aviva, Josh, and a puppy)
Crazy Christmas (red cover featuring Aviva and Josh ice-skating)
Valentine Blues (blue cover featuring Aviva and a boy... Josh?)

The only one I can't vouch for is Valentine Blues, since it came out when I was too old for the series.  I never even knew it existed until this past year.  But I really enjoyed all the others, and they're some great middle-grade reads... if you can find them!