Also Known As Harper

Also Known As Harper By: Ann Haywood Leal

Harper is a poet and loves to share her poems at school to her teacher.  But Harper’s dad left a while ago and her mother is having trouble paying rent on their house. Harper comes home one day to find everything they own in the front lawn and her mother tells them they are moving.  They move into a motel where they meet a couple of other kids that live around there. Harper can no longer go to school because her mother needs to work more and she has to stay home with her brother.  Harper finds out that life is tough but if you stick together things can work out even if they are not perfect. Harper finds joy in her writing and is able to make the best of a really bad situation for their family.

This is a terrific story of a child overcoming the bad things that can happen and do happen to many children. Harper and her family are basically homeless people and she has trouble dealing with that. Her brother constantly looks for their father to return and is crushed every day that he does not.  I cried a lot while reading this book because it breaks my heart that some kids actually do live this way. It makes me want to drive around and find these kids and let them go to school where they could be normal for a while.

I was given this book from a  friend, it is written at about a 5^th grade level, but very mature themes would make me say that maybe wait until middle school to have a child read this. 

ISBN: 978-0-545-24389-6