In order to play more music in the future, Gwilym first has to deal with the past.
Thirteen-year-old Gwilym Duckworthy’s favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It’s a day he spends with his family and friends playing football and taking part in a scavenger hunt. He is thankful for his good life. But this year, his mom calls him out of the blue wanting to reconnect with him, forcing Gwilym to deal with the complicated feelings of her leaving his family when he was just three-years-old.
Gwilym has decided he wants to learn how to play the trumpet, and when his mom tells him she’s going to be in town with her jazz band to play two nights at Princeton University, he wonders if she somehow knows about his musical dreams. Gwilym has been asked by her to meet with her alone, giving him an opportunity to find out more about his mom and why she left his family. Why did she only contact Gwilym, and what does she want from him now that so many years have gone by?
Listen delves into the issue of abandonment and reveals how through forgiveness and acceptance we can discover that we are more alike than we thought.
While discovering art and literature, Cat finds inner strength to face her family’s struggles, and to encourage her mom to seek help with a mental health condition. Drawing with Whitman is a novel for middle-grade readers that tackles tough subjects—and offers rays of brightly colored light.
Catalynd Jewett Hamilton has lived a peaceful life with her family on their old farmstead at the top of Sourland Mountain in central New Jersey. After a terrible car accident with her mom leaves Cat in a wheelchair with her legs in casts, her mom begins suffering from depression. With her older brother leaving for college, Cat has to take charge and guide her family back to happiness. Luckily for Cat, a new friend named Benton Whitman, a landscape painter and descendant of the American poet Walt Whitman, moves into the newly renovated studio-barn on the Hamilton property. Benton teaches Cat about art and encourages her to express herself through creative outlets like painting to explore her feelings about the big changes she faces in her life.