num_pages: 208
description: Love under trying circumstancesOne night out of the blue, Ratchet Clark’s ill-natured mother tells her that Ratchet will be leaving their Pensacola apartment momentarily to take the train up north. There she will spend the summer with her aged relatives Penpen and Tilly, inseparable twins who couldn’t look more different from each other. Staying at their secluded house, Ratchet is treated to a passel of strange family history and local lore, along with heaps of generosity and care that she has never experienced before. Also, Penpen has recently espoused a new philosophy – whatever shows up on your doorstep you have to let in. Through thick wilderness, down forgotten, bear-ridden roads, come a variety of characters, drawn to Penpen and Tilly’s open door. It is with vast reservations that the cautious Tilly allows these unwelcome guests in. But it turns out that unwelcome guests may bring the greatest gifts.By turns dark and humorous, Polly Horvath offers adolescent readers enough quirky characters and outrageous situations to leave them reeling!  The Canning Season is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
language: English
title: The Canning Season
titlecomplete: The Canning Season
genres: Fiction, Family, Juvenile, Teen, Humor, Middle Grade, Young Adult, Childrens, Realistic Fiction, Audiobook
ratings_count: 1332
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: National Book Award
category: Young People's Literature, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)