The Treasure of Maria Mamoun
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2017 Arab American Book Award
Twelve-year-old Maria lives a lonely, latchkey-kid's life in the Bronx. Her Lebanese mother is working two nursing jobs to keep them afloat, and Maria keeps her worries to herself, not wanting to be a burden. Then something happens one day between home and school that changes everything. Mom whisks them to an altogether different world on Martha's Vineyard, where she's found a job on a seaside estate. While the mysterious bedridden owner—a former film director—keeps her mother busy, Maria has the freedom to explore a place she thought could only exist in the movies. Making friends with a troublesome local character, Maria finds an old sailboat that could make a marvelous clubhouse. She also stumbles upon an old map that she is sure will lead to pirate's plunder—but golden treasure may not be the most valuable thing she discovers for herself this special summer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adult author Chalfoun's (The Width of the Sea) first book for children opens in a gritty section of the Bronx, where 12-year-old Maria Theresa Ramirez Mamoun (her mother is Lebanese-American, her absentee father Puerto Rican) lives with her single mother, Celeste, who works two nursing jobs to support them. Friendless and solitary, Maria is regularly taunted at school by the "Bad Barbies," and one violent bullying episode impels Celeste to find a job as private nurse to a bedridden film director on Martha's Vineyard. Arriving on the island, Maria transforms a little too quickly and easily into an adventurous and secretive girl with a mission: to find the buried treasure promised by the old privateer's map she has discovered. She befriends the housekeeper's wayward son, Paolo; warms up the crusty director; cleans up an old sailboat; and takes on the unfamiliar waters, first in a rowboat and eventually, with Paolo's help, in a sailboat. The plot builds smoothly and suspensefully as Maria puzzles over mysterious clues, and the happy, if somewhat predictable, ending is warmly satisfying. Ages 8 12.
