Turtle in Paradise

Life isn't like the movies and eleven-year old Turtle is no Shirley Temple. She's smart, tough and sassy enough to know that life in 1935 doesn't always have a Hollywood ending. Her mother has started a job as a housekeeper for a lady who doesn't like children, so Turtle is sent to live with relatives she has never met in Key West. They are not thrilled to have her and Turtle feels like Little Orphant Annie, out of place and alone. Florida is nothing like New Jersey but Turtle soon adjusts to living with her Aunt Minnie and wild cousins, Kermit, Buddy and Beans. She is introduced to their "Diaper Gang" as they spend their days pulling an old red wagon around babysitting for the neighborhood babies in exchange for candy. Their mysterious secret formula for eliminating diaper rash is legendary and Turtle discovers it even works on mosquito bites. Turtle's cousins' second favorite thing to do is think up wild schemes and go searching for the missing treasure of pirates buried somewhere in the Keys. Turtle learns about her mother's childhood growing up on Curry Island in the Keys and finds there are more questions than answers to her mother's leaving before she was born. Many of the incidents in this book were inspired by the author's great-grandmother's stories of living in the Keys. A hurricane and her's mother's return all become twisted up together in a heartwarming, yet surprising, story of life in Key West during the Great Depression. You will find this newest book by Jennifer Holms in the JFic section of the Children's Room.