Love under trying circumstancesOne night out of the blue, Ratchet Clark’s ill-natured mother tells her that Ratchet will be leaving their Pensacola apartment momentarily to take the train up north. There she will spend the summer with her aged relatives Penpen and Tilly, inseparable twins who couldn’t look more different from each other. Staying at their secluded house, Ratchet is treated to a passel of strange family history and local lore, along with heaps of generosity and care that she has never experienced before. Also, Penpen has recently espoused a new philosophy – whatever shows up on your doorstep you have to let in. Through thick wilderness, down forgotten, bear-ridden roads, come a variety of characters, drawn to Penpen and Tilly’s open door. It is with vast reservations that the cautious Tilly allows these unwelcome guests in. But it turns out that unwelcome guests may bring the greatest gifts.By turns dark and humorous, Polly Horvath offers adolescent readers enough quirky characters and outrageous situations to leave them reeling! The Canning Season is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.< Polly Horvath is the author of many books for young people, including Everything on a Waffle, The Pepins and Their Problems, and The Trolls. Her numerous awards include the Newbery Honor, the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, the Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature, the Mr. Christie Award, the international White Raven, and the Young Adult Canadian Book of the Year. Horvath grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She attended the Canadian College of Dance in Toronto and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York City. She has taught ballet, waitressed, done temporary typing, and tended babies, but while doing these things she has always also written. Now that her children are in school, she spends the whole day writing, unless she sneaks out to buy groceries, lured away from her desk by the thought of fresh Cheez Whiz. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband and two daughters.< "Horvath tops even Everything on a Waffle with this hilarious, heartrending tale of two unwanted children left with a pair of eccentric old ladies. . . Once again Horvath displays a genius for creating multigenerational, interestingly extended families, and for blending high and low comedy into a tale rife with important themes and life-changing events." --Starred, Kirkus Reviews"Readers are in for a wise and wacky ride." --Starred, School Library Journal"Alternately dark and humorous, Polly Horvath's imagination is always a treat." --The Chicago Tribune"Unruly, unpredictable and utterly compelling...Readers may find themselves wondering just how far Horvath will go with her uncensored, Mad Hatter humor - and they won't be disappointed with her steering." --Starred, Publishers Weekly< The Canning SeasonMRS. MENUTO LOSES HER HEAD"I'm going where?" Ratchet gasped."Maine.""Maine?" Ratchet cried. "Why am I going there?""You're spending the summer with great--second cousins, Tilly and Penpen Menuto. You can just call them aunts. I called them Aunt Tilly and Aunt Penpen, and they always referred to me as their niece. You can be a niece, too. Who says 'Great--second cousin once removed Tilly' or whatever it would be. It's too much of a mouthful. They're some distant relatives or other. I'd almost forgotten about them. I used to spend summers with them. You're old enough now to get some away-from-home experience, and that's the only free place I could think of.""I'm going tonight? Why didn't you tell me before?""I thought it would make a nice surprise. Come on, hurry up, it's going to take two days to get there. I've got train and bus tickets foryou. You'll like sleeping on the train. The clickety-clack and all that. Here's your itinerary. Hurry up, Ratchet, get your coat.""But it's hot out," Ratchet said."Not in Maine. Don't they teach you anything in school?" Henriette was walking swiftly up the basement stairs to the parking lot. She drove purposefully with no idea where she was going. She had never been to the train station, but she figured, what the heck, she had a map. Henriette took the same routes through Pensacola and never deviated from her habitual courses. Within minutes they were lost. Ratchet clutched her seat nervously as Henriette, flustered that the streets weren't where she figured they should be, almost hit a pedestrian and ran a stop sign. It was at this point that Henriette remember Read Less