Thumbelina
Subtitle: a novel
By: by Andrea Koenig.
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
Subjects: Pregnant schoolgirls -- Fiction; Mothers -- Death -- Fiction; Teenage girls -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Tacoma (Wash.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: Angelica Skyler certainly wasn't a perfect mother to fourteen-year-old Thumbelina, but when she is found dead in the local duck pond, Thumbelina yearns to have her back. Six feet tall with thick glasses covering a face she doesn't seem to know is pretty, Thumbelina is now alone with a few Johnny Cash tapes, a guitar that belonged to the musician father she never knew, and a spirit almost as large as the odds against her.

Quickly placed with a foster family, Thumbelina bumps straight into Myrna, a feisty redhead half her size and with a baby in her stomach. Also fourteen years old and as savvy as they come, Myrna has no trouble discerning that her secretive new roommate is pregnant, too. With little money but lots of charm, the unlikely pair strike out on their own, only to run into more serious trouble and heartache than they could have ever imagined.

Thumbelina's wonderfully idiosyncratic sense of humor and indefatigable courage guide her through social workers, a particularly tenacious doctor, and deadbeat dads as she struggles for a future just as she comes to terms with her past.