Sophie's Stormy Summer

by Nancy N. Rue Narrated by Judy Young

Overview

Is this the end of childhood? When a serious illness strikes one of the Flakes, the others can't daydream their way out of the shocking news. Instead they rally 'round and find that friends-and faith-show the way to a new adventure called growing up.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172665615
Publisher:	Zonderkidz
Publication date:	04/19/2011
Series:	Faithgirlz!/Sophie Series , #6
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

www.zonderkidz.com Sophie's Stormy Summer Copyright 2005 by Nancy Rue This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zonderkidz, 5300 Patterson Ave. SE Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rue, Nancy N.
Sophie's stormy summer / Nancy Rue.
p. cm.—(Faithgirlz)
Summary: The Corn Flakes are devastated to learn that Kitty has cancer, but when summer vacations separate them and put their new film on hold, Sophie determines to do anything God calls her to do to make Kitty feel better—even give up her beautiful hair.
ISBN 10: 0-310-70761-7 (softcover)
ISBN 13: 978-0-310-70761-5 (softcover)
[1. Cancer—Fiction. 2. Diseases—Fiction. 3. Sick—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction.
5. Christian life—Fiction. 6. Imagination—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series.
PZ7.R88515Sn 2005
[Fic]—dc22
2004030899
All Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Zonderkidz is a trademark of Zondervan.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
Photography: Synergy Photographic/Brad Lampe Illustrations: Grace Chen Design and Illustration Art direction/design: Michelle Lenger Interior design: Susan Ambs Interior composition: Susan Ambs Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09/?DCI/5 4 3 2 1
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
—2 Corinthians 4:18

No way would I ever want to be a lifeguard here,' Maggie said.
Sophie tilted her head back to look from under her floppy hat at her getting-tanner-by-the-minute friends.
Sophie's best-best friend, Fiona, didn't look up from the miniature hut they were building in the sand with dried seaweed sticks. She kept poking them in the sand with one hand while she brushed the usual strand of hair out of one eye with the other.
'Why not, Mags?' she said.
Kitty wrinkled her made-like-china nose, now spattered with freckles. 'I wouldn't want to be a lifeguard, but I might want to be saved by one.' Her dark ponytail bounced as she giggled—
which she did at the end of almost every sentence.
'Of course you would,' Darbie said, her Irish accent lilting through. 'If it was a boy lifeguard.'
'Gross,' Fiona said.
Sophie looked at Maggie, whose dark eyes were going from one of the Corn Flakes to another.
'So why wouldn't you want to be a lifeguard here, Mags?' she said.
All the Corn Flakes sat back on their heels and squinted through the sun at Maggie.
'Because your little brother and sister are always screaming like there's a shark attack 24/7,' Maggie said. Her words seemed to make soft thuds in the sand. But Sophie thought being at the beach even made Maggie's matter-of-fact voice sound lighter.
'How does the lifeguard know when to save somebody and when not to?'
She nodded toward Fiona's little brother, Rory, and her even littler sister, Isabella, who hadn't stopped shouting and squealing the whole five days they had been at Virginia Beach.
'Izzy and Rory have to make all those sounds at the seashore because they're little,' Sophie said. She had also felt like holding her arms out to the ocean and squealing several times since she and the Corn Flakes had been there, and she was TWELVE. It was as if the waves themselves, tumbling over one another like puppies, were setting her free.
Well, that and the fact that she was here with the four people in the whole world she could be herself with.
Sure, we're flakes, Sophie thought happily. And we do corny stuff—
but we are who we are.
'At least they're making happy noises for a change,' Darbie said,
nodding toward Izzy and Rory. 'Usually they're shrieking like terrorists.' She clapped a sunblock-shiny hand over her mouth and looked quickly at Fiona's mother. 'No offense, Dr. Bunting,' she said through her fingers. 'They're perfectly charming.'
Dr. Bunting pulled off her sunglasses and turned to Darbie. 'You were right the first time. They are little terrorists.'
'What I can't get,' Fiona said, 'is why they always have to be throwing something—buckets, sand, food—on each OTHER.'
She sighed out loud. 'It's heinous.'
Dr. Bunting blinked her gray-like-Fiona's eyes and put her sunglasses back on. 'If tossing a few Cheetos is the worst those two do before we leave here, it's because Miss Genevieve is the nanny from heaven.'
'I thought we were supposed to call her the au pair,' Maggie said.
'Just call me Genevieve.' The blonde, creamy-skinned woman who was on her knees making castle towers pointed a graceful finger at Rory. 'Get more of that sand you just gave me,' she said to him. 'With it just wet enough, we can build anything.'
Rory trotted obediently toward the water with his bucket and shovel, and Dr. Bunting looked out from under the brim of her white visor. 'See what I mean?' she said.
Sophie tried to imagine Fiona's last nanny playing at the beach with Rory and Izzy dumping seashells over each other's heads. Miss Odetta Clide had handed out demerits if they spilled their milk. True,
she had turned out to be less like a steel rod than they'd thought at first, but she NEVER would have gotten on her hands and knees in the sand.
The Corn Flakes—including their newest member, Willoughby—
had all been worried about who would take Miss Odetta Clide's place when she married Fiona's grandfather Boppa, and they went off to Europe on their honeymoon for the summer. With Fiona's parents taking all of the girls—except Willoughby, who was on vacation with her family—to Virginia Beach for ten whole days, the choice of a nanny would determine the amount of fun they could have.
Sophie watched Genevieve drip wet sand through her hand to create a castle tower, the way soft ice cream piled on top of a cone.
The au pair's thick braid hung over her shoulder like a silk rope,
and her blue eyes seemed to hug Isabella as the curly-headed four-year-old tried to dribble sand through her tiny fingers. I want to be like Genevieve when I grow up, Sophie thought. IF I grow up.
Not that she WANTED to—at least not right now. Here—
building a little beach hut out of dried sticks of seaweed with her best friends, she didn't have to think about anything scary, like starting middle school in two months . . .
'Okay,' Sophie said out loud. 'Everybody tell their favorite part about being at the beach so far.'
Fiona pushed a stubborn strand of golden-brown hair behind one ear as she poked the sticks into the adobe-colored sand like she was doing math. 'I liked it when we dug those giant bowls in the sand and climbed in there, all of us together.'
'We KILLED ourselves laughing over things that are funny only to us,' Darbie said.
'Was that your favorite too?' Sophie said to her.
Darbie kept weaving seaweed into the roof of their masterpiece for a minute. Her reddish hair and her snapping eyes were as dark as her flesh was white. She was the one most likely to burn like a marshmallow.

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