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    Forget Me Not
    Forget Me Not
    Forget Me Not
    Ebook306 pages1 hour

    Forget Me Not

    By Ellie Terry

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Astronomy-loving Calliope June has Tourette syndrome, so she sometimes makes faces or noises that she doesn't mean to make. When she and her mother move yet again, she tries to hide her TS. But it isn't long before the kids at her new school realize she's different. Only Calliope's neighbor, who is also the popular student body president, sees her as she truly is--an interesting person and a good friend. But is he brave enough to take their friendship public?

    As Calliope navigates school, she must also face her mother's new relationship and the fact that they might be moving--again--just as she starts to make friends and finally accept her differences.

    Ellie Terry's affecting debut will speak to a wide audience about being true to oneself.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMar 14, 2017
    ISBN9781250096289
    Author

    Ellie Terry

    Ellie Terry is a poet, writer, and reader who is diagnosed with Tourette syndrome. She loves baking brownies and has a slight obsession with the moon. She lives in Utah with her husband and their three children. Ellie is the author of Forget Me Not.

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    Reviews for Forget Me Not

    4/5

    67 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A novel written in verse, FORGET ME NOT is a story about a girl, Calliope June, who longs to live in a town for enough time to make a friend. Making friends is not easy for Calliope since she has Tourette syndrome. Hiding her ticks is challenging, especially when kids start to notice and comment how strange she is. When a new friendship for Calliope starts to blossom, will she have to move again?FORGET ME KNOT is an important book to have in every classroom and school library. Themes of acceptance, overcoming challenges, and doing the right thing are threaded throughout this book. Author, Ellie Terry, who is diagnosed with Tourette syndrome paints a realistic picture of life for a child with TS. The characters pull at your heart and will linger with you long after you finish the book. Beautifully written.
    • 4/5

      Loved this book! This takes you through so many emotions while reading it. If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.to
    • 4/5
      The book alternates between Calliope Jun and Jinsong. Calliope is on her tenth move. Her mom has a habit of picking up after breaking up. As the family settles in St. George, Utah, Callie meets Jinsong. She has tourettes but doesn't tell anyone, her strategy is to wear wacky outfits to school to hide her ticks. That doesn't work. I liked Callie finding her voice and her moxie and following her own counsel for copying strategies that actually work. Jinsong also grows from trying to fit in to following his own moral compass, even if it doesn't mesh with the popular crowd. A quick read with strong characters.
    • 4/5
      What a sweet, moving novel "Forget Me Not" was. Written in free verse, it tells the story of thirteen-year-old Calli who suffers from Tourettes Syndrome. She has just moved to another new school and is struggling to fit in.Calli's struggles are heart-wrenching. Not only does she have to cope with the spontaneous tics and sounds that she has no control of, but she also has to deal with the verbal abuse and teasing from her peers. My heart bled for Calli all the way through this story. She was such a tenacious young girl who picked herself up and continued on, and fought back despite her loneliness and hurt. It was only after I read the Author's Note that I discovered that the author also suffers from Tourettes, and that Calli's tics and struggles mirrored her own.Calli's mother and their neighbour, Jingsong, annoyed and frustrated me. Her mother was embarrassed of her daughter's condition and Jingsong, even though he secretly liked Calli, didn't have the strength of character to stand up in front of his friends and stop their harassment. Thankfully, he did grow throughout he novel but it took him too long to do the right thing by Calli.Beautifully and simply written, "Forget Me Not" is a touching read about self-acceptance and forgiveness, and perfect for younger readers who have ever struggled to fit in. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      A sweet story about Callie who moves to a new school and tries to fit in. She has Tourette's which express itself in her numerous tics and vocalizations which she tries to hide. Her mom moves her frequently as she falls in and out of love, so she is used to being the outcast weird girl, but no one really why. In St. George, UT she meets a boy who takes a chance and gets to know her despite the teasing he gets and Callie finally decides to disclose her illness at her next school.
    • 4/5
      Solid debut novel -- the book just flows from page to page, telling the story of Calliope June -- always moving, interested in astronomy and rocks, girl with long blonde hair and secret Tourette's. It alternates short prose from Jinsong, high achieving boy who lives next door in the apartment Callie has just moved into -- Jinsong who finds her fascinating and lovely, but keeps weighing what it will cost him in school popularity to admit this. There's a bit of beginning romance here, just a little. There's a lot of problematic behavior from Callie's mother.

      It's a great book, and I appreciate the author's note talking about living with Tourette's.
    • 4/5
      This book was provided to me by the library, because the library is awesome.As Calliope navigates school, she must also face her mother's new relationship and the fact that they might be moving--again--just as she starts to make friends and finally accept her differences.Ellie Terry's affecting debut will speak to a wide audience about being true to oneself.Forget Me Not is an excellent debut novel by Ellie Terry. The fact that Ms. Terry has Tourette’s Syndrome makes this fictional account even more moving. Our main character, Calli, makes my heart hurt. On top of having to deal with her tics and how her peers respond to them, she also has a mother who doesn’t really try to understand her. When we meet the Snow family, they are making their tenth move, and Calli is only in 7th grade. My family moved a lot, so I can sympathize with her “nowhere to belong” feelings. Additionally, she’s been told by her neurologist and her mother not to share the fact that she has Tourette’s, because they say people will get the wrong idea. Between her condition, not being able to talk about her condition, coping with bullies, and having a mother who is oblivious, this child has so much bottled up inside of her, that I’m surprised she held on to it as long as she did. I would recommend this book to anyone with a 4th grade or higher reading level, and especially to anyone who may know or work with a child with Tourette’s. I learned things from this book that will affect how I see this neurological condition and those who live with it.
    • 5/5
      Forget Me Not is written in a variety of poetic styles and focuses on Calli, who moves once again to a new school, has Tourette syndrome, and struggles to hide her tics from others. Jinsong is not only her neighbor, but friend. As mister popular, will Jinsong be bold and stand up for Calli when her tics are revealed? Beautiful story of friendship and conquering obstacles or, at least, confronting those obstacles with confidence.

    Book preview

    Forget Me Not - Ellie Terry

    PART ONE

    AUTUMN

    Saturday Morning

    I open my dresser drawers,

    find them

    empty

    empty

    empty.

    What the heck? Not again.

    I check the closet, the hamper,

    under my bed.

    Mom? I yell so she can hear.

    What did you do with my clothes?

    She doesn’t answer me,

    which means,

    we’re moving.

    Kitchen Rags

    I find her in the living room—

    eyes half-closed,

    lips pinched tight.

    She dumps an armful of socks

    into a brown moving box.

    It’s over, she says.

    Let’s go, she says.

    Don’t forget the kitchen rags, she says.

    I let out a long sigh.

    I won’t even get to say good-bye

    to my teachers.

    I sneak into the bathroom,

    close the door so she can’t see

    me pulling out my hair.

    My Hair

    My hair is the only thing

    I’ve ever liked about myself.

    It’s long and wavy and golden.

    Dad used to call it

    amber waves of grain

    like in that song,

    America the Beautiful.

    Which is why I wish

    I didn’t wind

    strands of it around my finger—

    twirl them once

    twirl them twice

    yank them out.

    Ouch.

    I flush the hair down the toilet.

    Can’t let Mom see.

    Mom said

    the next time she sees,

    she’s going to

    cut it.

    Fastball

    Coach Todd (my private pitching coach) holds a baseball between his fingers as though he’s showing me something breakable. Fastballs are the most important pitches to learn, he says.

    Aw, man. I was hoping we could work on my curveball this morning.

    If you can learn to throw them hard, he continues, you’ll be a step ahead of your competition by the time spring rolls around.

    Spring. That means I’ve got five months until Little League tryouts. Five months to learn to throw faster. Harder.

    My buddies—Duncan Gray and Nyle Jacques—have done club ball with me for the past four years. Now we’re ready to move on to bigger things. Like getting drafted to play on the Royals. Those guys are seriously good. The best of the best. Most of them are expected to make the All-Star team next year.

    It would be awesome if Duncan, Nyle, and I could all make the Royals. Problem is, there’s three of us, and only one open position (and rumor has it, it’s pitcher).

    Don’t Look Back

    It would be nice

    to stay in one place

    long enough to make a best friend,

    to keep a best friend.

    But

    every time Mom breaks up

    with one of her crazy boyfriends,

    it’s

    grab the keys

    pack the car

    hit the road

    don’t look back.

    So here we are

    driving,

    again,

    to who knows where,

    maybe just away,

    tires dizzying themselves

    as they speed across the pavement

    like all the times before,

    the white dashes blurring together into

    one

    long

    line.

    We won’t slow down until Mom’s grip

    loosens

    and her smile returns.

    Then we’ll pull over,

    make a new home

    in whichever town we’re in.

    Breakfast

    Mom tosses me

    a bag of cheese puffs.

    Eat.

    I scowl,

    toss the bag

    back.

    Nothing,

    not even cheese-covered puffs of yum,

    can fill the gaping hole

    inside my heart—

    the gaping hole

    where a friend should go.

    This Is the Place

    We roll to a stop

    in St. George, Utah:

    bright blue skies,

    hills the color of rust

    speckled by sagebrush

    unlike any town I’ve seen,

    looks like someone took a paint brush,

    dipped it in a sunset

    wish that pretty paintbrush

    could sweep away this feeling

    of hot air suffocating me.

    New Neighbor

    I’m sitting by the living room window when a small yellow car pulls into the parking lot of our boring apartment complex. A girl climbs out of the passenger’s side, wearing cutoff jeans and a faded blue T-shirt that reads Gimme Some Space in large black letters. The afternoon sunlight bounces off her hair like a pot of sparkling gold. Wow. The only girl I’ve seen with hair that long is Beatriz Lopez. (And hers looks nothing like a pot of gold.)

    The girl and the woman with her—I’m guessing her mother—carry boxes of stuff up the stairs. On their second trip up, the girl spots me through the window and smiles, making me forget what I was doing by the window in the first place.

    Unpacking My Stuff

    Hang up my clothes.

    Blow up my bed.

    Pull out my rocks.

    Stack my astronomy books

    in a corner.

    Done in seven minutes.

    The Usual

    Mom’s sniffling in her bedroom,

    so I walk in,

    wrap my arms around her waist,

    let her tears fall onto my face,

    listen to her promise

    that someday she’ll meet

    someone who’s

    handsome

    and        funny

    and        kind

    and        most of all

    financially stable,

    because

    two incomes

    is double just

    one.

    Towels

    Mom wipes her eyes.

    "Let’s finish unpacking,

    then we’ll go get dinner."

    I open a box of bath towels,

    groan. Oh no …

    I left the shampoo bottle

    open,

    packed it upside down.

    The towels are soaked,

    but on the bright side,

    they smell like sun-kissed pears.

    Mom presses her hands

    to her temples.

    "How about I go get dinner

    and a new bottle of shampoo,

    while you wash the towels?"

    I nod,

    tell her I’m sorry.

    She kisses my forehead.

    Love you, Sweet Pea.

    After Dinner

    The new girl trudges down the stairs with a basket of towels in her arms. (I happen to be sitting by the window. Again.) She makes her way over to the laundry house that all of the residents here share.

    I should probably go down and meet her. After all, one of my duties as Black Ridge student body president is to assist in welcoming new students.

    I run to my room, sliding down the hall in my socks, and grab some dirty clothes off the floor. I’m going to do some laundry! I yell, before heading out the front door. My younger brother, Chonglin, follows me, but I reach the laundry house way before he does and lock him out.

    Jerseys

    A boy lifts the lid

    on a washing machine,

    keeps glancing at me

    while he puts in his clothes—

    mostly baseball

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