Schmidt, Gary D. Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. New York: Clarion Books, 2004.
“Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for fifteen minutes shy of six hours. He had dipped his hand in its waves and licked the salt from his fingers. He had smelled the sharp resin of the pines. He had heard the low rhythm of the bells on the buoys that balanced on the ridges of the sea. He had seen the fine clapboard parsonage beside the church where he was to live, and the small house set a ways beyond it that puzzled him some. Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for almost six whole hours. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it.” (p. 1)
In some places, being the son of a minister is no big deal. Phippsburg, Maine, is not one of them. Everybody is constantly scrutinizing Turner to see if he is upright enough, moral enough, brave enough, polite enough, and even whether his shirt is starched-white enough. So far, he is a miserable failure.
And things only get worse after those first six hours. Within two days of his arrival in Phippsburg, he has become the laughingstock of the whole town for his failure at playing baseball, been teased mercilessly as a coward for not jumping off a huge cliff into the ocean, and gotten caught skipping rocks across water that just happened to bump into somebody’s old fence. Before he can blink, he is sentenced to spend his summer reading and playing organ for a repulsive old woman who yells at him, helps spread the rumors about him, looks and smells funny, and is absolutely obsessed with her own death and making sure her last words will be written down. He’d just as soon die.
But then he meets Lizzie, an island girl who can row a boat, play baseball like nothing else, dig clams, and speak to whales. And that changes everything forever.
