Stay
Coteau Books, 2017; Shadowpaw Press Reprise Edition, 2022
Grades 5-7/Ages 9-12
Coteau Books, 2017; Shadowpaw Press Reprise Edition, 2022
A Teacher’s Guide is also available.
Stay can be ordered from Shadowpaw Press
or
email Katherine Lawrence via the contact page on this website
or
through any bookstore.
Millie can read but she walked straight by the sign posted on the front door of her dad’s new apartment building: NO DOGS ALLOWED. How could she be so stupid? How could her dad be so dumb? He left her mom. Now he rents a place that won’t let Millie keep the pup he promised – promised –she could adopt. Mom has gone back to work full-time but says a pup costs too much money on a single pay cheque. Yet a pup would be good company for Millie. Especially in the middle of the night when she wakes in a panic about catching the wrong bus to the wrong address. A pup curled up at the foot of the bed would chase away Millie’s nightmare. Why won’t anyone listen to Millie? It’s not much fun moving back and forth every week between two homes, two beds, two kitchen tables, and two parents who cannot agree on anything except the one thing that evades Millie’s grasp.
Award winning writer Katherine Lawrence gives readers a contemporary story vividly told in rich and playful linked poems. Stay is a novel-in-verse that takes readers into the heart and mind of a young girl on the verge of discovering an ancient truth.
Read Punctuation, a poem from Stay.
Selected Praise for Stay
“Stay is brilliantly written; each word serves its purpose and powerfully paints the characters. The format is wonderfully unique. It manages to be both accessible to children and lyrically sophisticated at the same time. Heavy subject matter is treated with a deft hand.”
“Katherine Lawrence’s middle grade novel-in-verse, Stay, evokes the changeable emotions of eleven-year-olds and the enduring truths of community. Here is a world of families in transition, poor puppy training, and the possibility of discovering something new within the tatters of the old. Filled with charm and world play, Stay is a hopeful response to our modern struggles. As Lawrence writes: ‘All I had to do / was get off across the street from here and now, / transfer to bus something or other, / ring the bell / at come and go corner, catch I forget / and watch for the red mailbox.’ It’s everyday magic—stirred up, made bright”