Monsoon Summer

Jasmine "Jazz" Gardner heads off to India during the monsoon season. The family trip is her mother's doing: Indian-born Mrs. Gardner wants to volunteer at the orphanage that cared for her when she was young. But going to India isn't Jazz's idea of a great summer vacation. She wants no part of her mother's do-gooder endeavors.

What's more, Jazz is heartsick. She's leaving the business she and her best friend, Steve Morales, started--as well as Steve himself. Jazz is crazy in love with the guy. If only he knew!

Only when Jazz reluctantly befriends Danita, a girl who cooks for her family, and who faces a tough dilemma, does Jazz begin to see how she can make a difference--to her own family, to Danita, to the children at the orphanage, even to Steve. As India claims Jazz, the monsoon works its madness and its magic.

Description

"Jazz has always identified more with her tall, shy, "bulky" father than with her slight, "do-gooder" mother, but as she forms new friendships in Pune and delves deeper into her Indian heritage, she discovers her own strong beauty as well as the confidence to help others. Although Jazz's loving, altruistic, multiethnic family is a bit idealized, this debut novel, written in Jazz's smart, funny, self-deprecating voice, vividly evokes the smells, sights, and sounds of India in the monsoon season. Perkins folds interesting questions about caste discrimination, charity, and the challenges of growing up with a heroic parent into her warm, romantic story, which shows how the deepest private discoveries often come from very public risks." -- Booklist

Details

Recommended Age	13 and up
Author	Mitali Perkins
Publication Date	Aug 10, 2004
Publisher	Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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