Dreamsleeves

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

Overview

A powerful, radiant story about a girl who wears her dreams on her sleeve . . .Aislinn is a girl with a lot of dreams, but due to family issues (caused mostly by her hard-drinking father), there's a lot standing in her way. While she should be enjoying the summer with friends, Aislinn is kept under lock and key and put in charge of her younger siblings. The average girl might give up, but not Aislinn. A person, she says, should write their dreams on their sleeve, putting them out there for the world to see, because there's a good chance that someone might come along and help you make your dream come true. What begins as a plea for help for her father to stop drinking, turns into a spark that has the whole community making their own dreamsleeves. At times heartbreaking, DREAMSLEEVES is also surprising, powerful, and luminously hopeful. Everyone will see a little of themselves in Aislinn, a girl with talent, ambition, and big dreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545392457
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2012
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Lexile:	760L (what's this?)
File size:	879 KB
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Coleen Murtagh Paratore is the author of the popular THE WEDDING PLANNER'S DAUGHTER series, which includes most recently, FORGET ME NOT, WISH I MIGHT, and FROM WILLA, WITH LOVE. She is also the author of SUNNY HOLIDAY and SWEET AND SUNNY. The mother of three teenage sons, she lives in upstate New York and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Visit Coleen online at www.coleenparatore.com.

Read an Excerpt

From DreamsleevesMy father collects hubcaps. That's his hobby. When we're out for our family drive on Sunday afternoon, we'll be speeding along the highway in Dad's old red convertible, top down, wind whipping my hair back like I'm on a roller coaster, and sometimes Dad will spot one of those silver circles lying along the roadside. It's like he's got X-ray vision for those things, he spots them so far away.Dad will slam on the brakes, screech, flip on the blinking lights, and swerve our car right off the highway, dirt clouds swooping up making me cough like I'm front row at a rodeo. My mother will be holding Baby Eddie on her lap in the front seat and yell at my father for nearly killing us all, but my dad ignores her. He's on a mission."Sit still. I'll be right back," he tells me, B, C, and D, lined like sausage links in a pan.I stick my head out the window and watch him pick up that silver circle, his face all excited like a kid on Christmas morning. He turns it around in his hands and studies the emblem in the center that tells what sort of car this particular hubcap fell off of. My father loves cars. His dream is to own a Cadillac, the fanciest, most expensive car of all. Mom says we need a station wagon, though, so we can all fit.When the hubcap is from a car he doesn't have in his collection yet, my dad smiles, and I smile, happy for him. Later, at home, he'll shine up that hubcap and hang it on a nail on the wall in the shed with the others. My dad's got a whole hubcap gallery. It's quite a display. He's very proud of them. Prouder of them than me, I think.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 5–7—If the producers of The Secret teamed up with members of Al-Anon to create a didactic novel for preteens, Dreamsleeves might be the result. Set during the Vietnam War era, the story recounts 12-year-old Aislinn's frustration with her alcoholic father. There are blissful moments in her life—tea with her grandmother, perfect grilled-cheese sandwiches, and a kiss from her crush Mike Mancinello—but they are tempered by the ever-present rage that lurks within her father. As Aislinn attempts to avert his cruelty, she ponders her name (which means "dream" in old Irish). She decides to write her dreams on sticky name tags and attach them to her sleeve. In this way, she believes, everyone can help to make her dreams come true. The plan works several times. She gets a new bathing suit, her brother gets tickets to a ball game, and she bumps into Mike. The Law of Attraction seems to turn her life around. Desperately, she makes the wish for her dad to stop drinking and boldly wears this wish to church. What she finds is what every person involved with an alcoholic knows—dreams cannot stop a drinker. The period might not grab everyone (references to old songs, limbo, and purgatory) and some of the dialogue is stiff, but the emotions are universal. Aislinn is helpless while watching alcoholism destroy her family. The push for Al-Anon in the end is slightly heavy, but perhaps school psychologists or social workers might use Dreamsleeves successfully.—Pamela Schembri, Newburgh Enlarged City Schools, NY

School Library Journal

The summer before eighth grade is proving difficult for 12-year-old Aislinn O’Neill. When her Nana leaves town for a few months, her father’s drinking and physical and emotional abuse escalate, and Aislinn fears he’ll never buy the family’s promised dream house (“the one with the stream and the apple trees”). Her mother is pregnant with a sixth child, her uncles are serving in Vietnam, and Aislinn worries both that a boy named Mike Mancinello will never ask her out and that she’s losing her best friend. Yet Aislinn’s optimism, her Peely-Stick Shop (a blissfully isolated fort in the woods), and her “wide-awake dreams” keep her afloat and offer escape while she cares for her younger siblings. Adding to an overall uplifting atmosphere, Paratore (the Wedding Planner’s Daughter series) begins each chapter with inspirational quotes from various writers, and she creates a believable home environment for her heroine. Aislinn is sympathetic, selfless, and strong, and her intimate narration carries this story about the difference between hoping for change and making it happen. Ages 10–14. Agent: Tracey Adams, Adams Literary. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

This inspirational story set in the 1960s will resonate with a wide range of readers. Aislinn O'Neill is expecting big things in the summer before her eighth-grade year. She dreams that her father will quit drinking, that her family will finally own their own home and that a boy named Mike Mancinello will like her. Tall orders all. And it's not like she gets to devote all of her time to seeing them come true. Aislinn, or A for short, is in charge of her four younger siblings--B, C, D and E--while her parents are at work. Even when her parents are home, she is expected to help with household duties and is forbidden from socializing with her peers by her overprotective, controlling, alcoholic father. Aislinn never loses hope, however, and finally she hits upon an idea that just might work. Everyone needs help to make dreams come true, she reasons, and how can others help if people's dreams are tucked too deeply inside their hearts to ever be seen by anyone else? Aislinn grabs a label, prints a wish on it, sticks it right on her sleeve and starts a mini-revolution. While a few passages lean precariously toward the polemical and the resolutions are pretty quick and tidy, readers will be too squarely in A's court to care. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews