We’re very excited to feature Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee today – before we get into anything though, we want to tell you a bit about the book!
Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee (Website, Goodreads)Published by Aladdin on March 14, 2017
Genres: Adolescence, Coming of Age, Contemporary, Emotions & Feelings, Homosexuality, JUVENILE FICTION, LGBT, Middle Grade
Mattie is chosen to play Romeo opposite her crush in the eighth grade production of Shakespeare’s most beloved play in this Romeo and Juliet inspired novel from the author of Truth or Dare.
Mattie, a star student and passionate reader, is delighted when her English teacher announces the eighth grade will be staging Romeo and Juliet. And she is even more excited when, after a series of events, she finds herself playing Romeo, opposite Gemma Braithwaite’s Juliet. Gemma, the new girl at school, is brilliant, pretty, outgoing—and, if all that wasn’t enough: British.
As the cast prepares for opening night, Mattie finds herself growing increasingly attracted to Gemma and confused, since, just days before, she had found herself crushing on a boy named Elijah. Is it possible to have a crush on both boys AND girls? If that wasn’t enough to deal with, things backstage at the production are starting to rival any Shakespearean drama! In this sweet and funny look at the complicated nature of middle school romance, Mattie learns how to be the lead player in her own life.
Buy It On
Amazon / Barnes & Noble / The Book Depository
For the tour, we asked Barbara Dee one question… What’s Your Favorite Excerpt Why?
“And the funny thing about noticing: Once you finally do start noticing something, you can’t stop. Like how if you suddenly look in the mirror and thing, Omigod, my earlobes don’t match, the rest of the day all you see are EARLOBES. EARLOBES EVERYWHERE. It wasn’t as if people suddenly grew earlobes overnight, or you’d mistakenly entered Earlobe World–just that you began noticing earlobes.”–STAR-CROSSED, p. 174
I like this paragraph because I think it captures the way Mattie is processing her crush on Gemma, but without realizing it. One of the challenging things about writing STAR-CROSSED was respecting the main character’s confusion–not looking down on it, or writing around it (HEY READER, PSST, IT’S ME, THE AUTHOR, AND ISN’T IT CUTE HOW SHE DOESN’T GET IT?). I think this passage shows how hard Mattie is thinking, how perceptive she is, even if she’s not leaping to conclusions.
Make sure you swing by all the stops on the tour and say hello!
May 18, 2017Â YA Bibliophile
Top 5 reasons why people should read Shakespeare
May 19, 2017 Fiction Fare
Favorite Except and reason why it’s a favorite
May 22, 2017 – KellyVision
Review
May 23, 2017 – The Plot Bunny
Five qualities that you admire about your main characters
May 24, 2017 – WhoRu Blog
Novel Secrets
May 25, 2017 – Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Review and Top Ten Addictions
May 26, 2017 –  Nicole’s Novel ReadsÂ
About Barbara Dee
Barbara Dee is the author of seven middle grade novels all published by Simon & Schuster, including TRUTH OR DARE (Sept. 2016) and STAR-CROSSED (March 2017). Her next middle grade novel, HALFWAY NORMAL, will publish September 5, 2017. Barbara is one of the founders and directors of the Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival. She lives with her family in Westchester County, New York.
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