What do you think?
Rate this book
Edie ##1
All-Season Edie
Eleven-year-old Edie Jasmine Snow has one "perfect" thirteen-year-old sister, two loving parents, a cat named Dusty, a grandmother she suspects is a witch, and a grandfather who insists on calling her Albert. Framed by family summer vacations at the lake, All-Season Edie follows Edie through a tumultuous year in which her beloved grandfather becomes ill. In the face of family tragedy, Edie tries to practice witchcraft, learns to dance the flamenco, meets the Greek god Zeus doing his Christmas shopping at the mall, ruins the most important party of her sister's life and realizes that her family is both completely strange and absolutely normal.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
3 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Annabel Lyon
18 books128 followersAnnabel Lyon was born in 1971. Her first book of fiction, the short story collection Oxygen (Porcupine's Quill, 2000), was published to wide acclaim, and was nominated for the Danuta Gleed and ReLit awards.
Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Toronto Life, The Journey Prize Anthology, and Write Turns: New Directions in Canadian Fiction. Lyon is also a frequent contributor to the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail.
In addition to creative writing, Annabel Lyon has studied music, philosophy, and law. She lives in Vancouver, where she writes full time.
Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Toronto Life, The Journey Prize Anthology, and Write Turns: New Directions in Canadian Fiction. Lyon is also a frequent contributor to the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail.
In addition to creative writing, Annabel Lyon has studied music, philosophy, and law. She lives in Vancouver, where she writes full time.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 2, 2009
All-Season Edie, Annabel Lyon’s first pre-teen novel, chronicles one year in the life of eleven-year-old Edie Jasmine Snow, book-ended from one summer vacation to the next. The main themes are sibling rivalry and a grandfather’s illness.
I loved experiencing the world through Edie; a mix of being a bit too-wise for her years, a “typical” eleven-year-old, and sometimes acting younger than her age, makes her character credible while following the writing-fiction rule: make your main character “larger than life”.
Written in the first person, the book drew me in from the first paragraph:
A warm car makes a good place to sleep, even when you have to share the back seat with sleeping bags and the big orange cooler, and the kettle is on your lap, and they still make you wear your seat belt. I listen to the raindrops hit the station wagon, landing heavily, like magnets dragged from the gray sky to the metal roof. I watch water slurp down the windows and listen to the skreeking of the windshield wipers. I’m lulled by the rhythm, and I wonder why Mom and Dad find it irritating.
They’re on their way to a cottage on one of the Gulf Islands. They’d planned to go visit the Grand Canyon, but Grandpa recently suffered a small stroke and “perfect” 13-year-old sister Dexter is staying with best friend “Mean Megan” because their annual two-week ballet-dance class camp overlaps this vacation time that Dad can’t change. But their trip is cut short, just when Edie has developed a daily routine of fishing with “fat boy” Robert – because Grandpa is feeling just a little, little tiny bit worse.
Lyon doesn’t leave out the rest of the family as they deal with Grandpa’s slow but steady decline, particularly Dad and Grandma, but it’s Edie who really takes his illness to heart. She doesn’t understand, or mind, that her Grandpa has always called her Albert for some reason, because it’s obvious he knows who she really is. But what if he forgets? When Grandpa gives Edie a nickel – “What do I do with it?” – Grandma blows on it to make it lucky. Grandma has also been experimenting with remedies from an herb book. But Edie thinks her Grandma is a witch, and if she’s a witch, then Edie must be part-witch, which should be enough to cast a spell that will cure Grandpa, anyway. So, at school, when Edie needs to come up with a topic for a library project, she informs the librarian that hers will be on Witchcraft.
Meanwhile, special occasions and seasons pass and during the year all sorts of things happen. Throughout the stories within this novel, Annabel Lyon continues to entertain her readers not only by the events; by the way the characters behave and develop; but also by the language she uses: this is kid-lit at its best.
The relationship between Edie and Dexter is pitch-perfect and develops in a realistic, touching way. As the eldest of four, with a sister one-and-a-half years younger than me, as well as two brothers, I know first-hand about bickering and sniping and teasing yes, but also that current of love and loyalty and sense of duty to protect that can exist between siblings. It was also interesting to learn that the story takes place in Coquitlam, BC, which just happens to be where we lived until I was fifteen.
To an outside observer, I must have sounded as though I couldn’t stop laughing, but I probably only laughed every half-dozen pages or so. When I was quiet, said observer might have caught a glimpse of my sleeve swiping my eyes, or trying very, very hard to swallow.
To say that I enjoyed this book is a bit of an understatement. At the same time, I’m not entirely sure who to recommend it to, specifically. Evidently, it’s recommended for ages 10+, but I think I’d leave that open: after all, if I enjoyed it, then what’s to stop anyone from reading it? The more young adult books I read, the more impressed I am becoming with how refreshing they are – that’s it: this is not only good literature, but it’s refreshing. And there is going to be a sequel! I’ll bet that is the perfect project for Annabel after publishing The Golden Mean, which was nominated for all three of Canada’s top literary awards, and winning one: The Writers’ Trust.
I’ll be reading The Golden Mean next, but I also plan to read the sequel to All-Season Edie.
I loved experiencing the world through Edie; a mix of being a bit too-wise for her years, a “typical” eleven-year-old, and sometimes acting younger than her age, makes her character credible while following the writing-fiction rule: make your main character “larger than life”.
Written in the first person, the book drew me in from the first paragraph:
A warm car makes a good place to sleep, even when you have to share the back seat with sleeping bags and the big orange cooler, and the kettle is on your lap, and they still make you wear your seat belt. I listen to the raindrops hit the station wagon, landing heavily, like magnets dragged from the gray sky to the metal roof. I watch water slurp down the windows and listen to the skreeking of the windshield wipers. I’m lulled by the rhythm, and I wonder why Mom and Dad find it irritating.
They’re on their way to a cottage on one of the Gulf Islands. They’d planned to go visit the Grand Canyon, but Grandpa recently suffered a small stroke and “perfect” 13-year-old sister Dexter is staying with best friend “Mean Megan” because their annual two-week ballet-dance class camp overlaps this vacation time that Dad can’t change. But their trip is cut short, just when Edie has developed a daily routine of fishing with “fat boy” Robert – because Grandpa is feeling just a little, little tiny bit worse.
Lyon doesn’t leave out the rest of the family as they deal with Grandpa’s slow but steady decline, particularly Dad and Grandma, but it’s Edie who really takes his illness to heart. She doesn’t understand, or mind, that her Grandpa has always called her Albert for some reason, because it’s obvious he knows who she really is. But what if he forgets? When Grandpa gives Edie a nickel – “What do I do with it?” – Grandma blows on it to make it lucky. Grandma has also been experimenting with remedies from an herb book. But Edie thinks her Grandma is a witch, and if she’s a witch, then Edie must be part-witch, which should be enough to cast a spell that will cure Grandpa, anyway. So, at school, when Edie needs to come up with a topic for a library project, she informs the librarian that hers will be on Witchcraft.
Meanwhile, special occasions and seasons pass and during the year all sorts of things happen. Throughout the stories within this novel, Annabel Lyon continues to entertain her readers not only by the events; by the way the characters behave and develop; but also by the language she uses: this is kid-lit at its best.
The relationship between Edie and Dexter is pitch-perfect and develops in a realistic, touching way. As the eldest of four, with a sister one-and-a-half years younger than me, as well as two brothers, I know first-hand about bickering and sniping and teasing yes, but also that current of love and loyalty and sense of duty to protect that can exist between siblings. It was also interesting to learn that the story takes place in Coquitlam, BC, which just happens to be where we lived until I was fifteen.
To an outside observer, I must have sounded as though I couldn’t stop laughing, but I probably only laughed every half-dozen pages or so. When I was quiet, said observer might have caught a glimpse of my sleeve swiping my eyes, or trying very, very hard to swallow.
To say that I enjoyed this book is a bit of an understatement. At the same time, I’m not entirely sure who to recommend it to, specifically. Evidently, it’s recommended for ages 10+, but I think I’d leave that open: after all, if I enjoyed it, then what’s to stop anyone from reading it? The more young adult books I read, the more impressed I am becoming with how refreshing they are – that’s it: this is not only good literature, but it’s refreshing. And there is going to be a sequel! I’ll bet that is the perfect project for Annabel after publishing The Golden Mean, which was nominated for all three of Canada’s top literary awards, and winning one: The Writers’ Trust.
I’ll be reading The Golden Mean next, but I also plan to read the sequel to All-Season Edie.
May 6, 2018
All-Season Edie, a children's novel by Annabel Lyon, tells the story of 11-year-old Edie Jasmine Snow, as the seasons pass by breaking apart six scenarios in her life and putting one for each chapter. "Fishing with the Fat Boy" is the chapter where Edie and her parents went to a roadtrip to a misty lake with huts around it. Edie's 13-year-old sister Dexter couldn't go because she had ballet lessons and she had to stay with their grandparents. Because of boredom, Edie decides to go down to the lake instead of just sitting around the hut and reading magazines. She went to go rent out a pedal boat, but a fat boy around her age, Robert, soon reminded her to get a "pee eff dee", which was a personal flotation device, and that was the starting point of a new friendship for Edie and for Robert as well.
One of the central conflicts of the book is that Edie would always be somewhat envious of her perfect 13-year-old sister Dexter, and that would cause them minor arguments about little things. That does change when Edie's parents turn to favor Edie more than Dexter and that was when the battle of favoritism began.
There are some great moments though, like when Edie is dragged along on a Christmas shopping trip to the mall with her mom and sister. No-one realizes Edie’s running a fever, and then she starts to hallucinate that the Greek gods are at the mall too, doing their shopping… Or the argument between Dexter and her parents over taking her little sister along to her friend’s party.
This book focuses on the delicate balance of the fondness and infuriation of the siblings, how to cope with the mourning of the dead, and the caring love of their parents, all captured through the point of view of a middle school girl.
The book was overall a good story to read in one sitting. You can't just stop because it'll ruin the momentum of your reading and you'll end up just wanting to read more, which is probably the reason why I rated this a four out of five stars! Even though it’s episodic, thematically, everything fits together. I think young teens would be attracted to the splash of bright green and pink book cover and would most likely pick it. In my opinion, middle schoolers would enjoy the story of the 11-year-old Edie and her adventures throughout the seasons.
One of the central conflicts of the book is that Edie would always be somewhat envious of her perfect 13-year-old sister Dexter, and that would cause them minor arguments about little things. That does change when Edie's parents turn to favor Edie more than Dexter and that was when the battle of favoritism began.
There are some great moments though, like when Edie is dragged along on a Christmas shopping trip to the mall with her mom and sister. No-one realizes Edie’s running a fever, and then she starts to hallucinate that the Greek gods are at the mall too, doing their shopping… Or the argument between Dexter and her parents over taking her little sister along to her friend’s party.
This book focuses on the delicate balance of the fondness and infuriation of the siblings, how to cope with the mourning of the dead, and the caring love of their parents, all captured through the point of view of a middle school girl.
The book was overall a good story to read in one sitting. You can't just stop because it'll ruin the momentum of your reading and you'll end up just wanting to read more, which is probably the reason why I rated this a four out of five stars! Even though it’s episodic, thematically, everything fits together. I think young teens would be attracted to the splash of bright green and pink book cover and would most likely pick it. In my opinion, middle schoolers would enjoy the story of the 11-year-old Edie and her adventures throughout the seasons.
September 15, 2011
A young friend of mine brought this home from the library one day and I read it before returning. Lyon doesn't shy away from serious topics and Edie is an engaging heroine, all the moreso for being an eleven-year-old who's not yet into boys and teenagerhood. I'd give this to an older elementary school kid dealing with...well, lots: the decline and/or death of a grandparent or other relative, bitter sibling rivalry, loneliness.
September 4, 2008
I gave this 3*'s because of the humor I found in reading it.
There is really no story to the book, just chapters of Edie's life as an 11 girl who is a younger sister.
Good one for preteen girls.
There is really no story to the book, just chapters of Edie's life as an 11 girl who is a younger sister.
Good one for preteen girls.
August 2, 2013
very enjoyable delightful characters
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews