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Rules for Life
Cover of Rules for Life
Rules for Life
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When her mother died two years earlier, Izzy thought the world would change in some identifiable way, but it didn't. It didn't even slow down.

Along with constantly watching her brother, Jason, to ensure he didn't repeat his involvement with drugs, Izzy has managed to get through school and the rest of her life using her mother's endless "rules" as guidance, even making up some of her own as she goes along.

When her father starts dating again and then decides to get married, Izzy is unprepared. She is convinced she will hate this intruder in her ordered life and is certain that their family is complete as it is. When her father's new girlfriend becomes pregnant, and her health is threatened, Izzy finds that there might just be room in her family for Anne. And while trying to save her brother and stay true to the "rules," Izzy realizes that family involves more than blood and that rules aren't always absolute. A touching, often funny, story of love and acceptance, Rules for Life is a reminder that while we can't choose the family we are born with, we can choose the people we take along for the ride.

When her mother died two years earlier, Izzy thought the world would change in some identifiable way, but it didn't. It didn't even slow down.

Along with constantly watching her brother, Jason, to ensure he didn't repeat his involvement with drugs, Izzy has managed to get through school and the rest of her life using her mother's endless "rules" as guidance, even making up some of her own as she goes along.

When her father starts dating again and then decides to get married, Izzy is unprepared. She is convinced she will hate this intruder in her ordered life and is certain that their family is complete as it is. When her father's new girlfriend becomes pregnant, and her health is threatened, Izzy finds that there might just be room in her family for Anne. And while trying to save her brother and stay true to the "rules," Izzy realizes that family involves more than blood and that rules aren't always absolute. A touching, often funny, story of love and acceptance, Rules for Life is a reminder that while we can't choose the family we are born with, we can choose the people we take along for the ride.

Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
    3.9
  • Lexile:
    610
  • Interest Level:
    MG
  • Text Difficulty:
    2 - 3


About the Author-
  • Darlene Ryan has been writing for as long as she can remember and was the 2006 poet recipient of the Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell Early Childhood Literacy Award. As Sofie Kelly, she writes the best-selling Magical Cats mysteries. She lives with her family in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Reviews-
  • School Library Journal

    March 1, 2005
    Gr 9 Up -Izzy's mother died two years ago. Since then, she and her father have become best friends. When he tells her that he is going to marry his girlfriend, the 16-year-old's world is shaken. He says he wants to be a "real" family again, but Izzy feels that they already are. In fact, as far as she is concerned, she still has a mother: "Okay, we can't exactly go shopping, but I don't like shopping anyway." Through conversations with the people Izzy works with in a retirement home and her boyfriend, and a crisis with her troubled brother that brings her closer to her new stepmother, the teen comes to terms with her changing world. She has filled a little red notebook with her mother's various rules to live by: " -&I liked knowing my mother's rules, even the weird ones that I didn't get." She has sustained a certain balance in her life relying on them, and they have kept her mother at hand. She comes to realize, however, that the old rules cannot always apply. This book is written in easy, sometimes frank language. It would be accessible to reluctant readers, yet has a moving and sophisticated story line." -Elizabeth Fernandez, Brunswick Middle School, Greenwich, CT"

    Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Title Information+
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    Orca Book Publishers
  • OverDrive Read
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Rules for Life
Rules for Life
Darlene Ryan
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