Sweet and Sunny

Sunny Holiday #2

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

The second book in a fantastic new series about a poor girl with a rich outlook on life.

Sunny Holiday starts off her new year as Junior Deputy Mayor of Riverton, New York. Her mission? To help create a Kid's Day and turn it into a national holiday. Kids should have a holiday, just for them! So Sunny takes it upon herself to make this new holiday shine, getting her friends and family involved. Sunny is headstrong, funny, and trying to make the best out of every situation--whether it involves holidays or family problems. She's got spirit to spare--and you can't help but love her for it.

Genres: Cultural

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

I majored in English at The College of Saint Rose, in Albany, and after two internships in advertising and public relations, decided to enter the communications field, which is a place where writers can write and make a living too. I got married three months after graduation (my husband Tony and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary next August ), and we moved to Connecticut. I worked at a large advertising/pr firm during the day and got my master's in English at Trinity College nights. When we moved back to the Albany, New York area a few years later, I took a job as a publicist for Russell Sage College in Troy and soon became Director of Communications for the Sage Colleges. Our son, Christopher, was born in 1989. Two years later I took out a small-business loan, left my "safe job" and founded Books Worth Writing, to develop and publish The Remembering Book, an heirloom-quality tribute to a loved one's life (created after losing my best friend to cancer and wanting to be sure the story of her life was remembered and celebrated). This book-product is now in its 3rd printing, 10,000 copies sold. Around that same time, I began teaching as an adjunct instructor in the English Department at Russell Sage, doing freelance public relations assignments for business and nonprofit clients, and leading public-speaking workshops for women. Our son, Connor, was born in 1992 and then our third son, Dylan, in 1994.
After Dylan was born, I hopped off the career train for a few years to chase after three boys under the age of 5. I wrote a song for each of my sons and sang their special songs to them as bedtime lullabies. I kept a journal (I have on and off since college), wrote poems, and "roasts" for friends' birthdays, planted a perennial garden, a vegetable garden, read tons of books, started a book club, cleared a walking trail in the woods behind our house…and with my three young sons in tow, I returned to my "library days."
We devoured books together, morning, noon and night. We'd fill an L.L. Bean sack full of picture books every week, snuggle up on the couch, and read, read, read. I didn't know it at the time, but in addition to it being enormously FUN, this was fabulous research. As I was devoting my best creative energy to my children and sharing my love of books with them, I was soaking in lessons in characterization and plot and structure and language... feeding my writer's voice in happy hibernation.
I still didn't know that I would write children's books, yet everything in my life was leading me on that path. Ironically, I'd meet former business colleagues out and about and they'd say, "you're writing children's books, right?" I can't tell you how many people asked me that. It wasn't my goal or my intention.
Breaking into this business was the hardest and longest race I've ever run. I wrote stories for four years before I felt the work was ready. And then, once my writing was of publishable quality, it took two years of submitting before I got a contract. 179 rejections later. You've got to want it badly. You've got to read, read, read, and write, write, write and revise, revise, revise, and listen to people who are wiser than you, and learn from your rejections, and take comments from editors very seriously, and be willing to catch the fireflies of inspiration before they fly off forgotten, and, most of all, you've got to BELIEVE in yourself. Believe, believe, believe.
Emerson said "nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." Write on.

Reviews

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing I love most about this very sweet & charming series is that it shines through with love. Protagonist Sunny Holiday faces everything in the world, even the hard stuff, with a certain dignity & belief that all will work out, & one gets the feeling she is able to be this way, & to touch other peoples' lives with her cheerfulness, because of the strong & absolute presence of love in her life: from her hardworking mother, her currently absent father, her best friend, her perceptive teacher, & the people she's touched all over the apartment building she calls home. She takes her strength from the presence of that love, & then returns it to those around her. It's a very simple & powerful message that should resonate with the kids who read about Sunny & her ideas & experiences.
Coleen Murtagh Paratore's prose style is an equal part of the charm here - as usual, it's spare yet very descriptive in unexpected ways, getting serious points across with a uniquely phrased brevity.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the first book. Also, I thought the bit about the teacher being put on "disciplinary leave" for telling her kids they were some of the smartest kids in the state was ridiculous. Some things were really oversimplified. Still, you can't help but like Sunny's optimism and her unique ideas.

[Katie Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet and Sunny is Coleen Murtagh Paratore's follow-up to 2009's Sunny Holiday. Following on the heels of the events of the first story, Sunny is now in the throes of making Kid's Day come to life, while also missing her imprisoned father, and her beloved teacher, Mrs. Lullaby, who has been suspended. The new substitute teacher stifles Sunny's creativity, and worse, she suspends her when she hits a girl for referring to her home as the ghetto. At home, things are equally as bad, because her mother has lost her job, and the weather keeps canceling visits to her father. But through it all, Sunny remains determined and undaunted, and learns the important lesson that "one bad mistake does not make a good person bad."

Every bit as good as the first book, this is another excellent lesson in standing strong and facing problems head-on. Sunny stands up to bullies, the school administration, and even the mayor in this book, and she helps others as much as herself. I think children living in difficult situations will appreciate the beacon of hope Sunny represents, and any child can certainly benefit from learning to look for the bright side, even when it's really difficult to see.

[Melissa 11-12 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reason i liked this book was because it teaches you how to stand up for your self .

The second reason was because she never gave up even though the rich girls made fun of her and bullied her.

The second reason i had detals and i could really understand the the charaters.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as good as the first one but still great

[Julia Oliveira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book

[Tyra Mays]

i think tat this book was really good because she had found ot he daddy was in jail