{"id":11294,"date":"2020-05-20T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=11294"},"modified":"2020-05-19T12:17:53","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T17:17:53","slug":"soul-calls-to-soul-willa-and-the-whale-by-chad-morris-shelly-brown-middle-grade-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=11294","title":{"rendered":"Soul calls to soul, WILLA AND THE WHALE, by Chad Morris & Shelly Brown (middle grade book review)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"book<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

She observes and learns,
listens and writes,
are her own answers in the sea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Same island town in Washington that Willa left as a nine year old when she and Mom moved to Japan after the divorce, but now her horizons are wider and her grief is deep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a whale-watching trip with Dad just a month after Mom’s death, Willa films a gigantic female humpback whale breaching and calls out to her<\/a> and the whale Meg talks back!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too much can change in three years – best friend in a different house, too many people in Willa’s old house (step-siblings, half-sibling,<\/a> too much noise!), no Mom to help her study the creatures of the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Willa calls to Meg from the island beach, the whale answers from the distant deeps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When friend Marc is secretive, Meg gives Willa good advice. When something dreadful happens on the beach, Willa tells Meg about it first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Missing her Mom – will it ever get easier?
Being herself – will her island classmates ever understand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this tale of grief and loss and love, Willa’s journal entries from then and now reveal her deep appreciation of the sea’s inhabitants and her struggle toward living less-alone on the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When have you heard a call from afar?
**kmm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book info<\/strong>: Willa and the Whale \/ Chad Morris and Shelly Brown. Shadow Mountain, 2020. [Chad’s site<\/a>] [Shelly’s site<\/a>] [publisher site<\/a>] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She observes and learns,listens and writes,are her own answers in the sea? Same island town in Washington that Willa left as a nine year old when she and Mom moved to Japan after the divorce, but now her horizons are wider and her grief is deep. On a whale-watching trip with Dad just a month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,19,41],"tags":[90,272,22,11,5,37,16,220,87,79,18,40,44,43,103,49,184,256,21,268,35,8,84],"class_list":["post-11294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-fiction","category-paranormal","tag-abandonment","tag-animals","tag-behavior","tag-communication","tag-coping","tag-death","tag-determination","tag-diversity","tag-divorce","tag-environment","tag-family","tag-fathers","tag-friendship","tag-growing-up","tag-japan","tag-memories","tag-mothers","tag-ocean","tag-self-image","tag-stepfamily","tag-surprises","tag-us-author","tag-washington"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Willa-and-the-Whale-370x547-1.jpg?fit=370%2C547&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11294"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11308,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294\/revisions\/11308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}