Sassy Lexi Lee can’t think of spending the summer any other way than playing handball with her best friend Tommy. They have to practice hard—the Chinatown Handball team tryouts are in a month. Too bad Lexi’s summer quickly takes a different turn when her leg suddenly hurts. She’s sent to the hospital for an x-ray. A day of x-rays turns into a long hospital stay in Atlantis Ward—Lexi’s leg isn’t broken. She has osteosarcoma, bone cancer. When she undergoes chemotherapy, she loses confidence, thinking she’ll never be able to play handball like she used to again. She hates the Atlantis Ward; it’s filled with kids who look like bald aliens and one-legged freaks—all of whom eventually become her friends. Thanks to encouragement from her new friends and her Chinese fairytale-telling Gong-Gong (grandpa) and nurse student sister Janie, Alexis regains her confidence even as she loses her hair, appetite, and strength. After one summer in the Atlantis Ward, Alexis learns about life, death, and that hopes and dreams don’t go away even one has to battle cancer.
SUMMER IN ATLANTIS is a powerful addition to the surprisingly small number middle-grade novels highlighting the trials of children with cancer. Beautifully written by Doctor of Physical Therapy and Lymphedema Therapist Kat Lieu.
Excerpt:
I guess I like sports so much because I’m good at them. I’m not a good reader. I can’t write. I hate math. I only like science when it involves space or dinosaurs. I’m not the smartest or dumbest kid in class. I’m a Floater. (Not that stuff you find in toilets, ha.) I’m the kid who’s in the middle-- I know the answers when the teacher calls on me, but my answers aren’t witty or particularly smart.
Okay, so I lied. I do read. Tommy and I read comic books and manga. We’re addicted to cartoons and anime, Naruto especially. People don’t call me a tomboy— they call me Tom’s girl. But that doesn’t mean Tommy’s my boyfriend, yuck. Tommy doesn’t have a sister and I don’t have a brother, so Tommy and I are like siblings. Well, except his family is from Puerto Rico and mine came from Hong Kong. And he looks nothing like me. His mom braids his thick black hair in cornrows. His skin’s the color of milk coffee. He likes to wear loose baggy clothes and has a mole the size of half a dime next to his right eye. Sometimes, it looks like an extra pupil. So if he wore glasses, he wouldn’t be called four-eyes. I’d call him six eyes.
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