Where I've been maps

Since moving to Idaho I've gotten to add new states. :) I'm pretty sure that nothing has changed on the east, although looking at the map, now I'm wondering if I've been through Rhode Island as a child. Do you pass through it going from New Jersey to Cape Cod/Martha's Vinyard?


visited 41 states (82%)
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I haven't been to many countries in Europe, but I can definitely say that I've deeply explored Germany. Some of the other countries were while en route elsewhere, and er, well, I got a good view of the tarmac! But my body was there, so I'm counting it. I've gotten very close to Luxembourg, but never over the border. Next time...


visited 9 states (4%)
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So many places left to visit! When I look at maps, I want to go wandering...

Sea, by Heidi Kling

Sea, by Heidi R. Kling
Putnam 2010
YA

This is just the book I needed today! After stacks of high action/adventure/monsters/etc. books, I needed something realistic and character-based to balance out my reading diet. The story: three years ago when she was 12, Sienna's doctor parents were in Thailand on their annual humanitarian aid trip. Her mom tried to fly a load of emergency supplies to some children on an island, but a storm came up and her plane went down in the Indian Ocean. Since then, "Sea" has been afraid to surf, to be close to people, and of course, to fly. But for her 15th birthday, her dad springs a plane ticket on her. Come with him and his crew to Indonesia for two weeks and help kids in an orphanage deal with PTSD following the huge 2004 tsunami. Sea's scared to go, but a little girl on a video of the orphanage convinces her, and so she goes. There, she meets a boy who has been through the same kind of loss she has, only multiplied a whole lot more.

I really loved this book. It was one of those kinds of books that catch you around the heart, and I cried at the end, which is something I don't do much in books. The cover (while lovely and definitely fitting for the book) makes you think it's primarily a romance, but it's not, really. It's about a girl working through her own tragedy as she helps someone else work through his. And that's something any reader, in California or Indonesia or anywhere, can take with them after they've closed the cover.