Search - Heartbeat

This was one of the sweetest books I have read in a long time and it is going to be perfect for both of my pre teen daughters to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

In this poetic novel by acclaimed author Sharon Creech, Annie, a twelve-year-old girl, is trying to find out who she is. A lot happens in this short one-hundred-and-eighty-page book.

Annie's mother is pregnant, her grandfather is beginning to forget things, and her friend Max is extremely moody. Annie loves to run, and throughout the book there are "thump, thump, thump" lines where she can hear her heart beat in rhythm with her feet, which are running hard. Hence the title of the book.

In Annie's art class, the students are asked to take an apple and draw a picture of it for one hundred days. At the end of the project the students are to turn in one hundred drawings. There are poems in the book devoted to the one apple.

I love Ms. Creech's writing and admire her poetic style. The characters come alive as if you knew each one of them personally. I love reading books like that; they seem so real. HEARTBEAT is a simple, fun, fast read.

It is so rare to find a book told from the point of view of a 12 year old that anybody over 12 could bear to read! This book is a great book for reluctant readers- told in a loose poem form, it is highly readable, moves along quickly, and has a wonderful rhythm to it. It is wonderful for children whose life is in flux (which means just about all 10-13 year olds- a tough age for books, as they have outgrown a lot of the children's books but are not necessarily ready for young adult books). Lots of emotional issues flow through the book, but it is still a good choice for children who are uncomfortable with too much intensity in books, as the writing is light and nuanced and the issues are handled with care. However, as another reviewer noted, it is completely different from Walk Two Moons. In our house, that was a good thing, but if you have major WTM fans in your house you might want to look at the preview pages first