Product Description

“If you don’t want your heart broken, don’t let on you have one.”

Sara Moone is an expert on broken hearts. She is a foster child who has been bounced from home to home, but now she is almost sixteen and can not live in the system forever. She vows that she will live in a cold, white place where nobody can hurt her again.

But there is one more placement in store for Sara. She is sent to live with the Huddlestons on their sheep farm. There, despite herself, Sara learns that there is no escape from love. It has a way of catching you off guard, even when you try to turn your back.

When it was published in 1994, Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me won every major children’s book award in Canada. Since then it has appeared in countries around the world. Its story of love and longing strikes a universal chord.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1775099 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-02
• Released on: 2003-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A hard veneer encases 15-year-old Sara. Through a series of hardships and tragedies, Sara, given up at birth by her unwed mother, has traveled from one foster home to another. She eagerly awaits her next birthday, when she can quit school and be on her own. For now, however, Sara must adjust to yet another "placement." Arriving at the Huddlestons' farm, she meets a good-natured couple and their other charges--adorable Josh, age four, and the delinquent Nick, whose misdeeds nearly destroy these individuals' attempts to become a loving family. Johnston, the Canadian author of the award-winning Hero of Lesser Causes , has an uncanny ear for her characters' voices. If the plot is not altogether credible--especially a subplot about Sara's birth mother's search for her--the players are brilliantly etched, and a hint of humor lightens the somber mood. ("I think I ate only enough to keep body and soul on friendly terms," says Sara). Although neither as well-modulated nor as disciplined as Hero , the novel is moving and memorable. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 6-10-Sara Moone, 15, has found a perfect way to disconnect herself from anyone or anything that threatens to penetrate her prickly armor-she stores her feelings in a computer. Her latest foster home is with the Huddlestons on their Ontario farm. Ma is a nonstop talker and her husband is laconic. Sara soon treats her four-year-old foster brother, Josh, to the cruel pinching game referred to in the title. But slowly her icy defenses thaw, and she begins to let her new family, her social worker, and a local young man into her world. She must deal simultaneously with her other foster brother, Nick, who is eager to be rid of her, and with the arrival of a woman who claims to be her birth mother. When Nick sets a fire in the barn, Sara's buried memory of a fire is triggered, and something painful inside her is released. Her first-person narrative, with its informal language and strong sense of immediacy, has high YA appeal. The themes of the boundaries of parent-child relationships, loss, and the fragile situations of children who must adapt to abandonment are sensitively explored. Each of the supporting characters emerges distinctly, and the woman who says she's Sara's mother is especially compelling. Reminiscent in power and theme of Betsy Byars's The Pinballs (HarperCollins, 1977), but for an older audience, this novel speaks volumes about the complexity of relationships and human affection.
Carolyn Noah, Central Mass. Regional Library System, Worcester, MA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 9-12. Sara Moone's biological mother gave her up, her adoptive parents died when she was a baby, and since then she has passed through a series of foster homes. She is bitter, uncommunicative, and just hoping to remain invisible until her sixteenth birthday, when she'll have her independence. She records her thoughts on a computer, refusing to print, always intending to erase anything that might be too revealing, but always failing to do so. Her new placement is with the Huddlestons, on a farm, no less. Ma never stops talking. Pa rarely says a word. The other two foster brats are a total annoyance. To make matters worse, Matt Bellington, a neighbor and classmate, has taken an interest in her, as has almost everyone in the rural Canadian community, especially the woman who has come hoping to find the daughter she gave up for adoption. Clearly, they don't understand that Sara lives the motto If you don't want your heart broken, don't let on you have one. The author's masterly characterization turns this hardened-neglected-kid-learns-the-meaning-of-love book into a tender, multifaceted coming-of-age story. Sara's voice is witty, strong, compassionate, and appropriately wounded, and her sense of abandonment is believable. Spare but wonderfully precise descriptive passages draw us into Sara's world with an immediacy that allows us to come to appreciate the Huddlestons and their bucolic existence just as she does.

Customer Reviews

Grrrrreat and I haven't even finished it!!
The book is great for me. I only started reading this afternoon and I already love it! It's about this great Sara Moone a very interesting character whom many people will be able to relate to. Once you start this book...you won't be able to put it down. Go get it!

Great Book!
This book was a great read! I especially enjoyed it because I'm interested in adopting in the future, and this gave me an insight into the foster care system, albeit in Canada. The writing was great, although it's definitely a young adult book and not an adult book! The plot line would be a bit too easy for adults, but I don't think this would be a problem with younger readers (high school would be fine with it).

All in all, I really enjoyed this! I hope to read more of this author's books!

I Love This Book!
This book is really good. I think it has won an award. The story was really cute. I enjoyed reading about Sara. An excellent read. Get this book now!

P.S-I'm not a kid- I don't have a login