Laugh with the Moon

Shana Burg

- 4.3 • 15 Ratings

- $6.99

- $6.99

Laugh with the Moon is on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List.

Thirteen-year-old Clare Silver is stuck. Stuck in denial about her mother’s recent death. Stuck in the African jungle for sixty-four days without phone reception. Stuck with her father, a doctor who seems able to heal everyone but Clare.
Clare feels like a fish out of water at Mzanga Full Primary School, where she must learn a new language. Soon, though, she becomes immersed in her new surroundings and impressed with her fellow students, who are crowded into a tiny space, working on the floor among roosters and centipedes.
When Clare’s new friends take her on an outing to see the country, the trip goes horribly wrong, and Clare must face another heartbreak head-on. Only an orphan named Memory, who knows about love and loss, can teach Clare how to laugh with the moon.
Told from an American girl’s perspective, this story about how death teaches us to live and how love endures through our memories will capture the hearts of readers everywhere.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAY 14, 2012

With keen insight into culture and the psychology of grief, Burg (A Thousand Never Evers) crafts an atmospheric novel about 13-year-old Clare and her doctor father's nine-week trip to Malawi. Clare chafes at leaving her friends (and technology) behind, and she is still struggling with her mother's death eight months earlier. However, she is soon swept into a challenging but restorative adventure. When the headmaster at Clare's school recruits her to teach English to 176 students, she finds new strength and confronts the difficulties, like a lack of books and other resources; her friends help her find ingenious solutions such as shaping letters of the alphabet from baked mud. Imaginary and dream scenes between Clare and her mother are uneven: though they sometimes ground the relationship and emotions, they can also interrupt the pacing of the narrative. The setting and cast emerge as real standouts, especially Clare's friend Memory, who tells her, "Even the mourner must stop and laugh with the moon." As this memorable heroine contends with loss, Burg balances tragedy with hope and resilience. Ages 8 12.

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