The Great Unexpected
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From Newbery Medal winner and bestselling author Sharon Creech comes a grand, sweeping yarn that is a celebration of the great and unexpected gifts of love, friendship, and forgiveness. With a starred review from Kirkus Reviews calling it an ""enchanting tale to treasure,"" The Great Unexpected captures the heart and the imagination.
Humorous and heartfelt, this is a story of pairsâof young Naomi and Lizzie, both orphans in present-day Blackbird Tree, USA, and of Sybil and Nula, grown-up sisters from faraway Rook's Orchard, Ireland, who have become estranged.
Young Naomi Deane is brimming with curiosity and her best friend, Lizzie Scatterding, could talk the ears off a cornfield. Naomi has a knack for being around when trouble happens. She knows all the peculiar people in townâlike Crazy Cora and Witch Wiggins. But then, one day, a boy drops out of a tree. Just like that. A strangely charming Finn boy. And then the Dingle Dangle man appears, asking all kinds of questions. Curious surprises are revealedâthree locked trunks, a pair of rooks, a crooked bridge, and that boyâand soon Naomi and Lizzie find their lives changed forever.
As two worlds are woven together, Creech reveals that hearts can be mended and that there is indeed a gossamer thread that connects us all.
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Sharon Creech has written twenty-one books for young people and is published in over twenty languages. Her books have received awards in both the U.S. and abroad, including the Newbery Medal for Walk Two Moons, the Newbery Honor for The Wanderer, and Great Britainâs Carnegie Medal for Ruby Holler.Before beginning her writing career, Sharon Creech taught English for fifteen years in England and Switzerland. She and her husband now live in Maine, âlured there by our grandchildren,â Creech says.www.sharoncreech.com
HEATHER OâNEILL is a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her most recent novel is The Capital of Dreams. Her previous works include When We Lost Our Heads, which was a #1 national bestseller and a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de MontrÊal; The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Womenâs Prize for Fiction and CBCâs Canada Reads; and Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, and Daydreams of Angels, which were shortlisted for the Governor Generalâs Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. OâNeill has also won CBCâs Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, she lives there today.
